Bright Lights Cast Long Shadows Part 2: A Chance at Forever
by Myth979
Summary: 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.' Of course, it helps when you know where yours is. (Sequel to Even Stars Can Die, previously titled Treasures All Have Lost because I am indecisive)
1. Chapter 1

"Tauriel!"

Tauriel braced herself just in time to catch Morwinyon when the girl hurled herself into her arms.

"They did not find her," Morwinyon said, barely audible where she had buried her face into the crook of Tauriel's neck.

"I know," Tauriel murmured, cupping the back of the child's head. If Morwinyon grew any taller Tauriel might not be able to carry her at all, let alone one-armed, but for now she managed. "I am sorry. I could not find her either."

No one had expected her to find Laeriel. She was young and relatively inexperienced, but no one had objected when she presented herself for the search, and after all she _had_ found their last camp. She still felt like a failure here, where she could feel Morwinyon shaking infinitesimally and trying not to cry.

"I am sorry, Tauriel, I looked away but a moment!" The elf who hurried out to them was younger than Tauriel by quite a lot but still older than Morwinyon. He had probably been set by some official to keep an eye on her.

Morwinyon stiffened and Tauriel let her go. The princess stood straight, chin up, and levelled a look at the young man, whose expression now seemed taken aback.

"Your assistance is no longer needed," Morwinyon informed him, clinging to Tauriel's hand for all of her apparent self-possession.

"That is all very well, Mirwen, but I was asked-"

Morwinyon's chin rose even more. "You were asked to look after me while my family was away, but Tauriel is here now. You may go."

Tundir blinked and looked at Tauriel. She was almost afraid that would be a mistake – it certainly would have been with Thranduil – but she realized that Morwinyon was looking at her too, with that particular tilt of her head that meant the girl was asking for verification.

"I have her," Tauriel told him. "Legolas will most likely come looking for both of us later, at any rate – it will be easier if we are in one place."

Morwinyon nodded shortly and turned her back on Tundir. "Do you know when Legolas or my father will be home?"

Tauriel had meant to dismiss the young man with a little more grace, but she was distracted by Morwinyon's question and by the time she looked up again he had left. "I thought you wanted friends."

"Not Tundir," Morwinyon said. "He speaks to me as if I were a child."

"Morwinyon," Tauriel said, "you are a child."

"I am not _stupid_ ," Morwinyon replied irritably. "I understand what it means, that my mother is missing, and I understand that it is serious. He should not feed me platitudes. And he should not call me Mirwen, when I have asked him not to."

Tauriel blinked. "Only Tundir?" she asked carefully, wondering if there was some different reason for Morwinyon's irritation.

"Everyone else is willing to call me what I ask them to," Morwinyon said.

No different reason then, and nothing Tauriel had to worry about unless she decided to worry for Tundir's career as a babysitter. She did not. "I believe he is trying to be respectful."

"He is not succeeding," Morwinyon snapped.

"I only said he was trying, dearling, not that he was succeeding. You need not speak to him at all if you do not want to."

Morwinyon shook her head and buried her face against Tauriel again, clutching at armor and tunic indiscriminately. Someone took Tauriel's bow for her so she could kneel down and hug Morwinyon properly. She could not tell the girl that everything would be all right – Tauriel liked to learn from others' mistakes, and anyway her relationship with the princess was founded on near unflinching honesty – but she could and did let Morwinyon hide her tears from everyone else and croon a half-remembered lullaby from her own childhood.

Thranduil found them later. Tauriel had persuaded Morwinyon that moving to a bench would not impede their view of the palace entry or Legolas' return, and they sat there. Morwinyon had braided and unbraided Tauriel's hair until she got each section perfectly correct. Thranduil eyed the braids for a moment, and Tauriel blushed. "I didn't want to stop her," she mumbled.

He shook his head and sat beside them on the bench. "They suit you."

Out of the corner of her eye, Tauriel saw Morwinyon beam. Much to Tauriel's relief, the princess swung around on the bench to sit between her father and Tauriel, though she took Tauriel's hand again.

"Thank you, sir," Tauriel said.

The three sat in silence for a while before Morwinyon began to nod off.

"Time for bed," Thranduil said, standing. "Say goodnight to Tauriel."

Morwinyon sat straight again. "I am waiting until Legolas returns."

"Mirwen-"

"My name is Morwinyon," the princess said, sounding far too self-possessed for her age. "And I am waiting for my brother."

Something flickered across Thranduil's face – fear, maybe, or shock – and Tauriel noticed abruptly that Morwinyon was sitting like her mother, back ramrod straight and chin up. She wore an expression Tauriel had seen on Laeriel's face fairly often: eyebrows raised ever so slightly, mouth set, eyes narrowed just enough that the recipient would feel as if they were being inspected inch by inch. It was not a look that went with obedience. It _was_ a look that made Morwinyon look more like her mother than ever.

Thranduil cleared his throat, nodded, and left.

Tauriel was not an expert on father-daughter relationships, but she did not think retreat in the face of your daughter's resemblance to her mother was the best tactical decision.

Morwinyon watched him walk away, back even more rigid.

"You could go after him," Tauriel said. "Or ask him to come back."

"Is that your adult opinion on what I should do?"

Tauriel eyed her young friend, wary of the sudden undercurrent in her question. "No," Tauriel said finally. "I am offering options."

Morwinyon deflated, letting her head fall against Tauriel's arm and tucking her own arms around Tauriel's. "I chose the option that lets me stay here with you and wait for my brother."

So they stayed on the bench, even when Morwinyon fell asleep, curled against Tauriel's side like a kitten. Tauriel herself nodded off, waking briefly to find herself spread across the bench and hearing the murmur of conversation between Morwinyon and Legolas. Something pillowed her head, she thought hazily as she fell back to sleep, secure in her friends' presence.

She woke completely some time later. Her arm was all pinpricks and needles when she tried to sit up, and a heavy weight she identified as Morwinyon's head kept her from using it properly. The prince and princess of Mirkwood sat on the ground, leaning against the bench, fast asleep. Legolas' head rested against Tauriel's thigh and his arm was slung over Mornwinyon's shoulder, keeping her from sliding off the slope of Tauriel's arm and to the ground.

Tauriel very deliberately bent the leg Legolas rested against. He woke with a start before he toppled entirely over.

"You were asleep," he explained in response to her raised eyebrows. "Morwinyon was not far off, and I was tired as well."

"We all have beds, Legolas," she said dryly as she very carefully moved Morwinyon to the ground instead of dislodging her as she had Legolas.

He shook his head. "She did not want to wake you. And, too, I am half convinced she slept better here than she has anywhere else of late."

Tauriel rolled her neck to work out the kinks, wincing at the succession of cracking noises, and sat up. Her pillow was a makeshift affair of rolled cloth that she realized with a start of surprise was Morwinyon's overrobe. Legolas shrugged when she looked at him.

"She had already put it there when I arrived. I did not want to point out that it was too thin to do much good, since the alternative was nothing anyway."

"The alternative was apparently my limbs," she retorted. She had not been focusing on Morwinyon's clothes yesterday, so she examined the garment as she shook it out.

Thranduil liked pretty things, and though Laeriel's tastes had run more to armor or plain trousers and shirts for herself she had admitted that he always looked handsome in whatever he chose for himself. She had thus, according to Legolas, given Thranduil charge of the children's clothing until such time as they took interest in their things themselves. Legolas had apparently taken charge early: Morwinyon cared less even about what graced her body than her mother did. Tauriel had heard Laeriel tell Thranduil once that he should take it as a blessing, for at least one of his children would be dressed as he thought they should be.

Tauriel had to admit that the overrobe was beautiful, with its dark blue and silver shot threads, woven so finely as to be mostly invisible save for the graceful swirls of ocean foam near the hem and stars sprinkled about the chest and arms. She noted with amusement that they were in the forms of true constellations, and that Morwinyon's own namesake star featured prominently and contained a tad more silver than the rest. The workmanship would be wasted if it were worn with dark colors, but over the extremely pale blue dress Morwinyon was currently rumpling unforgivably it would stand out like a beacon.

It was also completely impractical daywear, even if it was sturdier than it looked. The dress, along with the rumpling, had several grass stains and a few spots of indeterminate origin, and Tauriel had drooled ever so slightly on the robe. She wiped surreptitiously at the corner of her mouth -

And woke up.

Tauriel stared up at the sky, keeping the dream close. It was real, at least as far as she could remember. Later that day she had taught Morwinyon to throw a knife to keep her occupied, and then she had sat vigil by Morwinyon's bedside so that when she woke - and she did, often - she would not be alone.

"Dreams again?" Fíli asked from across the remains of their campfire. He was little changed in the sixty-odd years since he had declared that he was done with the mountain and they had snuck out a side entrance, save for a few more scars.

"I don't have anything else to give," he had said. "I already gave my life and my wife and my brother and my uncle."

Tauriel could not argue the point.

Now she said, "Good ones, this time."

"You deserve good dreams," he said, and they started packing up their camp. The Men here had stopped looking askance at the elf and dwarf who slipped in and out of their villages, leaving food or healing or helping to hunt down orcs. This close to Mordor, it did not behoove them to question kindnesses.

Sometimes they even recovered those the orcs took.

* * *

Morwinyon walked along the edge of a narrow canyon, enjoying the breeze and the lack of childcare. No one had come with her: once the twins were finally asleep Kíli had barely made it to his bed before he fell asleep, and Dis had not been much better for all her experience. Morwinyon, who needed less sleep, fared better, but the crying grated on her more sensitive hearing. She had needed a break, and Dis had waved her tiredly from the house.

The Blue Mountains were not deserted by any means, but the dwarves who had lived with Dis had certainly deserted the Blue Mountains. It was Dis and Kíli and Morwinyon alone now, with the twins.

Morwinyon was not sure how to feel about that, but she knew how to feel about the signs of orc that she saw. For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should go back. She was completely healed now, though, even if her hair had grown in white in some places and her scars would be forever evident. She adjusted the eyepatch she wore and told herself that she would need to know more to properly warn Dis and Kíli, and began to track.

Ten minutes later Morwinyon crept over a ridge and winced at the sight that awaited her. There had definitely been orcs in the area, and they had left bodies. Two of them, to be precise.

"Surely you were not alone," she murmured to herself, after she had ascertained that the orcs had moved on. She stood over the corpses, hands on hips, and one…

Morwinyon had never thought much about her elf senses. She could tell when someone was married, and if someone was an elf (or part-blooded, she supposed), and she could presumably tell when someone (else) was pregnant, but those were not conscious things. They also only seemed to apply when the people in question were among the living, which meant the man on the left, who was definitely Dunedain, still lived.

Morwinyon picked her way down the steep slope, keeping an eye out for trouble, and lifted the Dunedain into her arms. He was not that heavy. She took him back to Dis.

"I'm not a nurse," Dis informed her when Morwinyon dragged the unconscious Dunedain home. The words were sharp, but her tone was absent: she was already turning to sort through the stock of herbs and ointments she had bullied Morwinyon into expanding with what she remembered of Tauriel's medic lectures.

Morwinyon smiled at her mother-in-law as she and a bleary-eyed and just-awakened Kíli went to put the Man into her bed – it was the only one big enough – saying, "At least we have not brought back another elf?"

Dis snorted loudly enough that Morwinyon could hear it in the hall.

"He won't bleed out," Kíli told his mother when she entered Morwinyon's room. "Morwinyon wrapped him up pretty well, and he isn't bleeding inside or anything."

"Do I tell you how to shoot things?" Dis demanded.

Kíli mouthed, 'yes,' but he waited until Dis passed him so only Morwinyon could see him do it. She barely contained a chuckle.

Now Theron, looking much better if somewhat older for the fifty-nine years that had passed since then and still spry enough to hunt orcs with the rest, said, "Sometimes, Morwinyon, I think you like danger."

Morwinyon smiled crookedly at him. "Sometimes you are correct."

" _I_ don't like danger," Kíli muttered. The rangers around them laughed, and Theron passed him a wineskin.

The Dunedain were a welcoming people, when approached correctly. Morwinyon, Kíli, and Dis had approached with a recovering Theron, Tauriel and Angion slung over their backs, and the clan had shrugged over the dwarves and fussed over Morwinyon, who Theron had easily called 'cousin'. She was still unsure whether they assumed she was Dunedain herself or if they simply did not care that she was an elf. It seemed rude to ask.

"Just don't die before you finish teaching my girls," Burin said. "Alia is determined that they'll learn Quenya."

"Last night I was supposed to live to finish telling the tale of the silmarils," Morwinyon protested. "Before that, you wished to know of Elros. You exhaust me with these tasks."

"There is much to be known about Tar-Minyatur," Helan said solemnly, but she laughed with the rest when Morwinyon flicked her fingers in dismissal of the King Name.

Morwinyon had never asked if dwarves took different names when they became kings. Would she still have called Fíli by that name, or would she have had to get used to something different?

"Tari and Nion certainly like to hear of him," Kíli said. "I don't see the appeal, myself."

Morwinyon was about to protest that Tari, at least, liked better to hear stories of her namesake when Caro's horn sounded a little to the west. Almost as one, she, Kíli, Theron, and the rest readied their weapons and moved out to assist.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a week later when the party returned to the main camp of the clan. Alia, Burin's wife, greeted them with crossed arms, though most of her ire seemed focused on Caro. Her younger brother had a broken arm and a sheepish smile.

"Don't be too hard on him, Alia," Kíli said. "He managed not to die."

Alia fixed him with a narrow glare and said, "Presumably he was being careless."

Morwinyon did not want to admit as much to the woman in charge of the day-to-day running of the camp and clan. Caro was younger than her own twins and had been excited to go out with a scouting party. She did not want Alia to decide that he was still too young to do so regularly, not when he wanted to go so badly.

But Caro had been careless. He should have called for them earlier.

"Only a little," Theron temporized. Morwinyon still did not fully understand how Dunedain counted kin - she knew Theron was related by blood only distantly to Alia, but they counted each other closer through a web of marriages that Morwinyon could only squint at. Dís was better at untangling it all, and Tari and Angion, having grown up around it, could follow it easily. Kíli and Morwinyon usually shrugged and accepted what they were told without inquiring closely.

Alia raised an eyebrow at him and turned to Morwinyon. "Helir brought in another book. My girls are sure it's Quenya, but they can't translate it."

"I will collect it as soon as I have seen my children," Morwinyon promised, laying a hand over her heart. Alia's face softened at the gesture, as it always did. She had told Morwinyon once that it was endearingly sincere.

"Perhaps after I bathe, though," Morwinyon added, and Alia laughed.

"Get on with all of you," she advised, grabbing Caro's shoulder on his uninjured side. "I'll take care of this one."

Morwinyon and Kíli headed for Dis' tent. Once the Dunedain had lived in cities and towns throughout Gondor and Arnor, and rangers had been few and respected. Now they were all rangers, whatever age they were and however respected -or not - they remained. Now they lived in tents and moved regularly, searching out orcs and all manner of other things. There was a military precision to the camps, even the parts sectioned off for families and young children: everyone learned early that it was best to be prepared.

Dis, as the matriarch of their little family, techncially had possession of the tent and was charged with offering hospitality or giving Alia notice when they had room for wounded or travellers from other clans to stay. She and Tari and Angion were so often at the travel-forge the clan took with them, and Morwinyon and Kíli were so often out with scouting or raiding parties, that they often hosted such Dunedain. The latest had arrived while Morwinyon and Kíli were out, but she nodded at them at the entrance, where she sat taking care of her weapons.

"Moireen," she introduced herself, which made Morwinyon bite her lip. That was probably a variation on her own name - many Dunedain names were, in some way or another, variants on Quenya. "No tragic story for me - just a message delivered and a wait for the reply."

"Morwinyon," Morwinyon replied, since by Dunedain custom it was for her to introduce male family members to women who may or may not want to know them - or maybe it was because she might not want the women to know her male family members? Dunedain. "This is Kíli."

Moireen nodded, and said, "There's wash water, though it isn't warm. Lady Dís said you might be back today."

No one had _told_ the Dunedain that Dís was a lady. It was simply assumed. Morwinyon could not say she blamed them.

"My thanks, my lady," Kíli said, smiling winningly. Morwinyon rolled her eyes. Kíli was still an accomplished flirt, no matter that it never went further. It _could_ have, she had reminded him on several occasions - nobody would blame him for moving on from a relationship that had not even been an engagement - but he had laughed and said with great melodrama that his heart belonged now only to his family.

But he still flirted shamelessly.

Moireen smiled just as winningly back and said, "How could I resist, when you'll surely be more handsome clean?"

Morwinyon took the opportunity, as Kíli laughed, to bathe first.

* * *

Tari was hammering away at something when Morwinyon arrived at the forge, so she sat to wait. Dís was arguing with someone some distance away, and of Angion she saw no sign.

When Tari finished, she turned to her mother, wiping sweat from her brow with cloth. It smeared soot and dirt across her face and a little bit into her hair, making the golden strands a little darker. The only real sign of Noldorin heritage in either of her children was the lack of eyelid crease and general shape of their eyes - though only Tari had inherited Morwinyon's dark, almost black irises - and of course, their height. They were only an inch or two above five feet, but they were still taller than most dwarves.

Though Morwinyon supposed Angion could blame her for his lack of beard. Tari's had grown in along the sides, with a slight wisp at the chin, but Angion's face remained smooth.

"I'd hug you," Tari said in Khuzdul, "but you seem to be clean, and I am not."

Morwinyon laughed and pulled her in anyway. Tari returned the embrace easily, which Morwinyon counted as a parenting success.

"Are you done for the day?" she asked her daughter. "Where is your brother?"

"Nion is off talking to Rinna again," Tari said, voice slightly muffled. Morwinyon released her. "I can be done for the day. Grandmother has been muttering under her breath since he left."

Rinna was the clan's horsemistress, and fifteen years Angion's senior. She thought Angion was adorable, like one of the foals she reared. Morwinyon knew Rinna did not mind him trailing after her, because Morwinyon had asked.

"It's always nice to have such willing help," Rinna had said, grinning. "Also, the sooner he gets to know me the sooner he'll get over me."

Morwinyon did not think Rinna was so odious that acquaintance would make her less desirable, but she did know that Rinna preferred to romance women. Perhaps that was what she had meant?

"Dís often mutters under her breath," Morwinyon said. "Would you like to help me write out Helir's newest find?"

Tari did some muttering of her own - she had not taken as well to either elvish language as her brother - but she still went.

* * *

"I never learned much Quenya," Moireen said apologetically, when Morwinyon offered to let her look over the book. It was tattered and stained, but still mostly legible in all but a few places. "Our lorekeeper wasn't as good at is as he might have been, but he said nobody much spoke it anymore either."

Which was, along with their delivery of Theron, one of the reasons the clan had welcomed Morwinyon and her family so much. Fluency in Quenya was a prized and rare thing in the clans, who were clinging to the tattered remains of Numenorean culture with the grim determination of drowning men who had found something to hold onto. Technically Alia's clan did not have a lorekeeper - lorekeepers were too precious to send out with scouting parties, though they of course would defend the camp - but Morwinyon had unofficially and mostly accidentally assumed the role. It was, she felt, the least she could do for the descendants of her mother's cousin.

Sometimes she wondered if she should go back to Mirkwood, if only to take the books she had read on Numenor and her history and customs back to the Dunedain.

"Would he like to come here?" Morwinyon asked. "Or I suppose I could travel, if you need him at home."

Moireen laughed. "Maybe he will send his apprentice - when he has one. He is young still."

How young was he, if Moireen, who seemed to be about Tari's age, called him that?

"Am I too young to learn Quenya, then?" Orta asked plaintively. Her elder sister flicked her on the ear, and Tari intervened before there was an actual fight. Orta and Meli were a contentious pair.

Tari took the girls off to run out some energy and probably to pester her brother. Orta and Meli enjoyed it almost as much as she did, and all of them, Morwinyon was sure, enjoyed escaping Quenya lessons.

"The message I brought," Moireen said when they were gone. "It did call for you specifically, along with the clan. Your knowledge of the old ways is known and appreciated. There is a meeting of the clans, and they wish to discuss precedent and inheritance."

"I am not as conversant in current inheritance practices as I am old ones," Morwinyon said carefully, for Moireen should have known it. Inheritance was presided over by the clan leader, who made adjustments if necessary or someone was shown to be unfit for a hereditary position. Morwinyon could spout ancient inheritance and lineage all she wanted, but matters of current law were still in the hands of Alia, and they would be even if Morwinyon was officially invested as lorekeeper.

"It is old ones they want to talk about," Moireen said, looking at her as if she was imparting more than the information she had actually given.

Morwinyon waited. She had noticed that if she did so while looking steadily at people they either assumed she knew more than she did or became uncomfortable enough to tell her things they might otherwise not - or, in this case, just _be clear with the information._

Moireen said, "There is some discussion of the heir of Isildur, and his suitability - or not - to rule all of the Dunedain, and not just those who are of Arnor."

"I was not aware he had put himself forward," Morwinyon said carefully. She knew in the abstract that there was an heir of Isildur's floating around somewhere - her father had mentioned one staying with Elrond - but she was not sure if that was the current one or the previous. They all seemed to have one heir and no spares lately, from what she could tell.

"He hasn't - not exactly. But someone has proclaimed him at Rivendell, my clan leader heard, and she believes her source - Aragorn, son of Arathorn."

The latest one, then. Morwinyon was sure Thranduil had called the one he spoke of Arathorn.

"If he is who he says, he has the best claim," Morwinyon said. "But no one needs me to tell them that."

"No," Moireen agreed. "But my clan leader says, she would first need proof that he is who he is said to be, and then she would need proof that he is worthy to lead the Dunedain, or if he would fall to the same weakness as his forbearers. Maybe, she says, it is time for the Dunedain to put less stock in the line of Isildur, when it is so clearly flawed."

"I would not know," Morwinyon pointed out. "I have never met him - he is not of this clan, though I think his mother rode with us for a time, before."

Moireen waved that away. "Others who have ridden with him will attest to his character, or not. My clan leader wants to know his other ties, that might lead him to put others above his own folk, maybe. He was at council in Rivendell."

"Everyone was at council in Rivendell, probably," Morwinyon said.

"He was _raised_ there," Moireen said. "My clan leader wants to send someone there, to speak to those who know him, and to speak to those who would know his allegiances."

Morwinyon realized, with a sinking feeling of dread, or maybe guilt, in her stomach, what Moireen was saying.

"Your clan leader wants me to go to Rivendell," she said.


	3. Chapter 3

Tauriel was taken aback to see a dwarf in the next town: she and Fíli had not seen any of his kin since the mountain. Few came to the southern reaches of Gondor, and those few they had avoided. Perhaps it had been long enough. She knew Fíli missed his mother - she knew too that he seemed to feel he could not go back, as if losing Kíli meant he was banned forever.

When Fíli went to the innkeeper to see about a room for the night, and more importantly a bath, she slid onto the bench across from the unfamiliar dwarf.

"Where do you hail from?" Tauriel asked.

They eyed her warily. Tauriel still could not tell the difference on site between male and female dwarves, but to dwarves it only mattered in very specific circumstances.

"Ered Luin," she said. "There is a settlement, beholden to the Lady Dís. If you do not come from there, do you have news of it?"

"I know the place," they said slowly.

"My companion seeks news," Tauriel said.

"What news of Lady Dís could the companion of an elf seek?" the dwarf asked, the corner of their mouth curling into a tiny sneer.

"He has been long from home," Tauriel continued, ignoring the sneer and gesturing behind her. The dwarf looked in spite of themselves, and squinted dubiously at Fíli.

"If he is your companion I believe it," they said finally.

Tauriel levelled an unimpressed look at them as Fíli turned and saw her chosen seat. He frowned at her, but she raised her eyebrows and jerked her head, indicating the spot beside her.

As Fíli sat beside her, widower's braid clearly visible, the other dwarf started, bowing their head and touching their heart as if in reflex. "Sorrow for your spouse," they said gruffly.

"Accepted," Fíli said, still eying Tauriel.

"But news of Lady Dís - we don't just tell anyone," they explained.

"My sister wishes only to know she is well," Fíli said. "She has a highly developed sense of familial obligation."

Tauriel kicked him in the ankle, and he grimaced and excused himself to fetch ale.

"Your friend is gold-touched," the dwarf said when Fíli was far enough away not to hear, touching their own hair. "It's lucky."

"I suggest you tell him that to his face," Tauriel said, thinking of Fíli's dreams. They were similar to hers, sometimes: battles and screaming and Kíli and Morwinyon dead a hundred ways. Other times they were dark, as if he was in an endless night without stars, with only silence for company. He was not sure, he told her, which ones were worse. "He could use a laugh."

The dwarf shook their head. "Elves always think about things like it's about them. _He_ isn't lucky. He's lucky for other people."

"Perhaps do not tell him to his face," Tauriel said after a moment of consideration. "That might upset him."

The dwarf shook their head again. "Lady Dís settlement is no more. All who lived there went to Erebor and Dain." With a short, nervous look at Fíli's back, the dwarf added, "I would not take your brother back there, were I you."

"Thank you for the advice," Tauriel said, and the dwarf left after scattering a few coins on the table. She realized she had not caught their name.

* * *

"Tauriel," someone said, and she knew she dreamed even as she turned to see one of Thranduil's councilors.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Morwinyon has been somewhat out of sorts," he said, looking uncomfortable. "I know it is not your job, but she does seem to like you, and Legolas is away."

Not for the first time, Tauriel wondered why no one went to Thranduil with this. Also not for the first time, she pictured the reactions of everyone involved if that happened: Morwinyon awkwardly yearning and therefore standoffish, Thranduil awkwardly yearning and therefore standoffish. Tauriel would end up dealing with tears after the inevitable prideful stare-down. She knew for a fact their family dinners often consisted of both of the others speaking to Legolas, sometimes managing the whole meal without speaking to each other.

"I will visit her," she promised, and went to request an afternoon's leave from the Captain.

He looked at her for a long enough moment that she had to work not to shift uncomfortably. "Did the princess ask for you?"

"No," Tauriel said. "I don't believe she's been out of her rooms since her brother left."

The captain sighed. "The girl has her mother's face and her father's temperament, and there's her brother with the opposite. His sulks, at least, are short-lived."

"I would not call it sulking," Tauriel demurred, though really she wanted to decry the comparison to either parent, and the captain snorted.

"Whose?"

"Well," she temporized. "Morwinyon probably just needs some fresh air. Or exercise. Or a purpose."

He grinned. "Like someone else I could name. Go. Consider it blanket permission unless told otherwise, and _keep in shape_. I've no use for scouts who can't keep up."

She blinked at him.

He rolled his eyes. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to deal with him when the princess is making her displeasure known? Pray for a plague on spiders and content sindar, Tauriel. Anything outside of those is easily handled."

Tauriel considered the door in front of her. It was locked, but the tray outside was empty, which meant Morwinyon was eating. That was an excellent sign; she knew that the girl was sometimes not hungry through either will or melancholy (or will because of melancholy). Those were the worst times.

She knocked.

"I do not want counsel," Morwinyon snapped from within. "I do not want tutors, either. You may tell my father I sent you away or you may try to lecture me through the door, but I will not listen."

"Would you send a friend away as well?" Tauriel asked.

The door opened with a swiftness Tauriel could hardly credit, and she had a sudden armful of gangly-limbed not-quite-grown elf. Someday Morwinyon would grow into her long legs and bony arms, but this was not that day. Tauriel winced as an elbow knocked into her ribs.

"I would never send a friend away," the princess said into her shoulder. After a moment she drew back and collected herself. "I thought you were busy?"

"I have been granted leave," Tauriel said instead of answering directly, allowing Morwinyon to tow her into the suite by the hand. The room was a little chilly, as it always seemed to be, the fire unlit though there was wood stacked neatly near the fireplace. The bed, visible through a half-open door, was made but not to perfection and despite that it looked like it hadn't been slept in. The window seat on the other hand had a blanket slowly sliding from it to the floor, obviously thrown off in haste. The breeze that slipped in through the open window would have made Tauriel shiver if she had not been so on guard against any signs of Díscomfort already.

Morwinyon noticed anyway. "Oh, I'm sorry." She dropped Tauriel's hand to close the casement.

"You are not cold?"

"I've blankets aplenty, and the weather's not _bad_."

Tauriel shook her head at her and settled on the window seat. "What holds your attention here?" she did not add _princess_. Neither Morwinyon nor Legolas liked it when she called them by their titles.

"Outside." Morwinyon shrugged. "Usually I can see you and the other scouts leave – I have a good view of the bridge if I lean out. I watched Legolas ride out last month."

"You could have come down to bid him farewell," Tauriel said mildly.

Morwinyon ducked her head. "I bid him well the night before. He did not ask me to come in the morning."

"You did not ask me to come, and I am here. And I believe you welcome it."

"You are always welcome!" Morwinyon exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"I think you are always welcome, in your brother's case," Tauriel told her gently.

"You think so?" Tauriel would not have thought the girl's eyes could grow wider, but they had.

"I do," Tauriel said firmly. "And I know you would be welcome outside these rooms by others."

"Why bother?" Morwinyon muttered. Her face fell abruptly from wide, wondering eyes to half-lidded sullenness as she sank beside Tauriel on the seat and slumped back against the wall, one eye still on the window.

"Well," Tauriel began, inspiration growing slowly. "You could join the scout recruits for training."

Morwiyon stiffened, shooting a furtive side-eyed look at her. "That is not why," she began.

Tauriel waved that off. "I know that is not why we are friends. You have no need to be friends with a scout to learn the skills – you could request it at any time."

"He would never let me go anywhere."

That was probably true. Thranduil was particularly close-minded about his daughter's welfare; Tauriel had never _quite_ figured out why he was less so about the son who so obviously had his ear and whose counsel he trusted, but she supposed parents were funny like that sometimes. Nevertheless.

"You never know. Maybe he will if he sees you can take care of yourself."

Morwinyon cast one last look at the window, long and longing. "I suppose it cannot hurt to try, can it?"

* * *

Should she have kept Morwinyon from trying? Tauriel wondered when she woke. Could she have? She supposed it would have been like keeping Kíli out of the fight at Erebor: unthinkable and near impossible. Neither of them would have dealt well with being confined.

"You could have warned me, before you asked after my mother," Fíli said. She rolled over to see him looking up at the stars.

"I was afraid you would try to talk me out of it," she admitted. "But now we know: she is in Erebor, and she is safe."

Fíli held his necklace in one hand, the other arm folded under his head, and did not answer. Tauriel had given it to him almost immediately after they had left the mountain.

"I suppose Morwinyon did say it was supposed to be given by her mother," Fíli had said, voice cracking on Morwinyon's name. "I take it I have your approval, then?"

She had hugged him, and they had held each other through the night.

Now he said, "I'm glad she's safe."

"Maybe one day we can return, and you can show her you are safe too," Tauriel said.

She counted the tiny smile she received in response a victory, and doubly so when he said, "Maybe."


	4. Chapter 4

"You said you didn't want to go," Dís said, hands on her hips.

"Rivendell is not Mirkwood," Morwinyon replied, wondering why she was arguing. She did not want to go. She was going to go anyway, it seemed.

"They shouldn't ask."

"They hardly know why," Morwinyon pointed out. Tari and Angion sat at the small fire, exchanging looks. Morwinyon realized suddenly that she was not actually certain they knew they were half elven: she could not recall discussing the topic with them. Surely they did?

"Morwinyon will go if she decides to," Kíli said, stirring the pot. "Even you can't stop her, Mother."

Dís sniffed.

Morwinyon felt the need to assure her. "If you do not want me to go, you can tell me so. You usually have good reasons."

"You said you didn't want to see your father," Dís said. "It seems to me that seeing any of your kin would lead to seeing your father."

Dis, Morwinyon reflected, had taken to correcting her perceived wrongs with Kíli and Fíli by a near militant defense of her daughter-in-law's decisions, whatever those decisions might be and however unwise they might turn out to be. There had been plenty of unwise decisions over the years, but Dís still stood strongly behind her.

"Who _is_ your father?" Tari asked. "You never mention him."

"He doesn't need mentioning," Dís snapped with such vehemence that Morwinyon frowned and examined her mother-in-law more closely. Kíli, too, sat back with a frown, and Tari blinked. Angion put an arm around his sister's shoulders.

"He never hurt me, Dis," Morwinyon said carefully, unsure where the vehemence had come from. "Never even thought to. It was the opposite. I do not like him, but he would have kept me safe to the end of all our days." She smiled a little, to reassure Tari and Angion. "That was the problem, really."

"So he kept you wrapped up in swaddling cloth and inside that forest," Dís said. "And you won't go back, because you're afraid he'll do it again, and what happens when he realizes he has grandchildren?"

Morwinyon realized all at once what Dís true worry was. She said, "Dis. My father is vain and overprotective and sometimes awful, but he could not keep me then and he cannot now, even if I see him. He cannot take me - or Tari, or Angion - from you."

Dís would not look her in the face. Morwinyon exchanged a quick glance with Kíli, who made a helpless gesture. Finally she leaned forward and laid two fingers on the back of Dis' hand, as she had so many years ago. "I promise," she said.

* * *

Alia came even later, when the stars were fully out. Morwinyon waited for her outside the tent: inside Dís and Kíli and the twins slept.

"I wouldn't ask it," Alia said. "We all know you're wary of elves, and whatever the circumstances might be, we try not to ask too much of our people."

Morwinyon's heart warmed at 'our people', so she smiled at Alia. "I know."

"But, Morwinyon…"

Alia sighed and looked up at the stars. She might be looking at Morwinyon's, but there was no way to tell. "You and I both know there are many reasons you are the best choice to go."

Alia knew for sure, then. Morinyon did not know why she was surprised.

"We do," Morwinyon agreed. "And I will, if you ask."

Morwinyon had seen Alia grow from ten to her now seventy years, and she had seen Alia give orders that she knew her people would not come back from and orders where they might, and even, on good days, orders where they definitely would. The look on Alia's face now, as she looked up at the stars, was achingly familiar, and Morwinyon could not give her the same promise she had given Dis.

"I do ask," Alia said finally.

Morwinyon bowed her head, and Alia, with one last long look at the stars, took her leave.

There was no question of her going without Kíli, but her children - or at least one of them - questioned her going at all.

"But _why_?" Angion demanded in Khuzdul, as they all usually did when they argued. "Surely there are other emissaries. Most elves don't even speak Quenya, that can't be your qualification-"

"Alia asked," Morwinyon said. "And it is probably past time I dealt with a few things anyway."

"Your father?" Angion asked. Behind him Tari pointedly did not turn around.

"Perhaps," Morwinyon replied. "But Angion-"

"He doesn't deserve it, Grandmother said so-"

Morwinyon stopped packing to catch hold of his hand, and reached out to Tari too, kneeling so she could look her children more easily in the eyes. "My father is not the most deserving of my care," she said. "But he is not undeserving, either. Listen, please, before you interrupt, and when I am done I will listen to what you have to say."

Angion bit his lip. Tari watched her somberly.

She took a deep breath. "It is not easy to hear these things about your mother, I know. But you should know… well, the truth, I suppose. I do not go to my father because I cannot face him, not because he will not accept me. I have left my people and my responsibilities twice over, and I did it only - well, mostly - for me. By most counts that makes me a coward, or at least irresponsible, and definitely selfish. I have tried very hard to be a good mother-"

Angion opened his mouth. Morwinyon raised an eyebrow at him. He closed it.

"I have tried to be a good mother," she repeated, "and a good sister, and a good daughter, and loyal, and I think I have managed to be all those things now. I did not manage them before. And, too, now I understand that it is possible to be a good person and a poor parent, and also the other way around. If you meet my father - well. Do not fear him. He would never hurt you. But be, perhaps, wary, for if he has learned to love in a less proprietary fashion it will be more than he learned when I was there."

Morwinyon smiled a little as Tari nodded and Angion frowned. "I am going," she continued. "I said I would, if Alia asked, and she did. I _am_ the best one for the job. How can I say no, when her people have loved us so well?"

Neither had anything to say. She kissed them each on the brow, trying to remember that they were supposed to be adults now, and returned to packing. When she was finished Tari went back to the forge, and Angion went with her, and Morwinyon took herself off to Rinna and Rinna's horses. They were riding as far as the next clan, with a string of horses Rinna and Alia had promised for breeding stock.

Kíli was already there, making Rinna laugh as he accepted the reins of the pony she passed off to him.

"Only the best for you, Morwinyon," she said, still laughing but managing in between to whistle sharply.

A large roan mare, ears pricked forward, led a group of six others to Rinna, who she snuffled over as if expecting a treat.

"None today, greedyguts," Rinna admonished, slipping a bridle over the mare's head with ease. "I'll put the others on the line, if you'll tack this lady up, Morwinyon."

While Morwinyon obliged, Kíli said, "That was a good speech you gave the twins."

"I did not realize you were listening," she said, ending in a grunt as she tightened the girth. The mare took a quick nip at her. "None of that," she ordered, switching to Sindarin. The mare huffed, stamped, and subsided.

"I didn't think I should come in. But it was nice. Do you believe it?"

Morwinyon spent the rest of the two day ride considering it, and remembering.

* * *

"Look at the stars, Ada," Morwinyon said, tugging Thranduil's robe with one hand and pointing up with the other. "Show me mine?"

He knelt obligingly and leaned over so that his face was near hers, moving her finger so that it seemed to touch the correct star. "There you are," Thranduil said. "The brightest one."

"Eärendil's is brighter," she corrected him.

Laeriel snickered.

"I think the matter up for debate," he said, ignoring his wife. "And anyway, Eärendil is always moving. Who knows how bright he _truly_ is."

"Very," Legolas said dryly.

Morwinyon laughed and turned to hold her arms up imperiously to her brother. He picked her up.

"You are becoming very heavy," he told her.

"Yes," she agreed. "I am growing."

"You are going to be taller than your father," Laeriel said matter-of-factly.

"Oh good," Thranduil said. "I shall be very intimidating when people walk into my hall, if I am surrounded by giants."


	5. Chapter 5

"I am Morwinyon!" Morwinyon called, when the scouts for the clan asked from up in the trees. There were arrows trained on them - she could see the glints from the heads. "With me is Kili, my brother. We are Alia's folk, from two days north. We come with horses, and to pass through to Rivendell."

She did not add that they were expected. It did not matter - they would still be greeted with arrows. The clans were all wary these days.

"I know you, Morwinyon and Kili," one of the rangers in agreed, dropping to the ground. "Maybe you'll remember - we rode out for the north downs, though we never made it."

Morwinyon remembered the ride, but not the woman, at least not at first. They had ridden north and received orders to turn west, back towards Evendim. A pack of goblins had been stealthier than usual, and more rangers had been needed to track them down.

"Crandal!" Kíli exclaimed, dismounting to greet the woman with an arm clasp. Morwinyon copied him with a smile, remembering now - Crandal had badgered her about the probable origins of her name. Morwinyon had been ready to dunk her in the lake, but she had been a good person to have at her back anyway.

"You'll stay for a night?" Crandal asked. "Our lorekeeper would ask a few questions of you, Morwinyon, and our forgemaster has a question about a technique - and I am not clear on the details."

"A night only," she said, exchanging glances with Kili. "We journey with purpose."

"Don't we all?" Crandal asked, laughing, and led them to the main camp.

* * *

Kíli listened to his sister explain for the third time in as many hours to the third ranked member of the clan that she did not know this Aragorn son of Arathorn personally. She was beginning to lose patience, he could tell. Probably by the fifth request for her thoughts on Aragorn's character she'd snap and say something entertaining.

He was sure most of the clan leaders knew that Morwinyon was an elf, even if the common run of Dunedain accepted her as their own - it didn't make sense, that Alia had kept it from them, especially not with this request. Unfortunately it seemed to make them think she would know more than she did - as if all elves were old and wise. In fairness, he reflected, he'd thought so too, and Morwinyon did have white in her hair. It made people think she was older.

"But surely you have _some_ insight," Beslan protested. The clan leader was male, which was a little unusual but not unheard of amongst Dunedain. Morwinyon had not batted an eyelash about talking to him before being properly introduced by his sister or wife or whatever, because she did not care. As a widow Kíli had noticed that the Dunedain gave her more leeway in things like that. Kíli never got that leeway - just because _he_ considered himself promised didn't mean the Dunedain did. The lorekeeper for this clan had turned immediately to Morwinyon when he'd tried talking to her, a blatantly nervous expression on her face.

The expression had disappeared immediately when Morwinyon had formally introduced them, of course, but it was still irritating. Dwarves didn't have that kind of nonsense: if you wanted to talk to someone you did. The Dunedain put too much emphasis on gender, he felt personally, but then again he felt the same way about elves.

In the early days they had all wondered why Dis and Kíli had needed to be introduced by Morwinyon, and Morwinyon had been about to storm out of a gather in a high dudgeon, thinking the clan had not wanted to talk to dwarves. Eventually they had straightened that out - everyone had thought Dis was male - but Kíli still failed to understand why it mattered in the first place.

Still. The Dunedain had been good to them, and even better to Angion and Tauriel, and he was grateful. It didn't mean he didn't think they were weird.

"No more than do you," Morwinyon said, accent rolling out in a way that was rarer and rarer these days. It was why her Khuzdul always sounded just a little off, though Kíli would never tell her so. She couldn't quite manage some of the harsher sounds even if her vocabulary might be even more complete than Kili's own.

Kíli said, "We don't usually come this far south."

"He rode to the north," Beslan argued.

"But not with us," Kíli said before Morwinyon could, shrugging. "Maybe another clan would have more insight."

"No one seems to know anything about him," Beslan said. "It's almost like he sprung from nowhere."

"I am sure his mother bore him as our mothers bore the rest of us," Morwinyon said. "And his mother did ride with us for a time, or so Alia says, so her character is vouched for."

Perhaps Beslan heard the same bite in her tone as Kíli did, or maybe he had just talked himself out. The gathering ended with no more direct talk of Aragorn son of Arathorn.

"You can't say that of the twins, you know," Kíli told her as they went to the tent assigned them.

"Pardon?" Morwinyon asked.

"The twins," he said. "Their mother did not quite bear them as our mothers bore the rest of us."

She laughed, as he had intended, an said, "Well, if I hear that Aragorn was cut from his mother I will be more wary."

When they lay in the tent (its owner was one of the scouts who had greeted them, and was still patrolling), Morwinyon said, because she knew he liked to hear such things, "Tauriel would have slept outside. She hated not seeing the stars even when we were in my father's halls. My windowseat had the only real view of them, and we would sit there long into the night."

It was the same way he had learned that Tauriel had had no blood family left, and that she had liked apples and been terrible at card games and been raised to captain of the guard and scout leader too young, probably, but she had done the jobs anyway and been good at them.

"She raised me too young," Morwinyon had said once, when they were camping out, staring at the stars. "But then, she was good at that, too."

Now, he said without any real heat, "You've told me that already."

"Have I begun to repeat myself?"

"Sixty years. It's bound to happen sometime."

Morwinyon laughed, and said firmly, as she always did, "She loved you very much."

He didn't mind when she repeated herself, really.

* * *

Angion and Tauriel were freakishly well behaved for dwarvish infants. Kíli was beginning to think he'd have to take Drastic Measures, because it couldn't be natural. Their father might not have been the troublemaker that Kíli was, but he'd had a strong mischievous streak anyway and their mother had gotten fed up with being a literal princess locked away in a literal tower and run off to fight a literal dragon.

Being well-behaved was just not in their bloodline. Tauriel's namesake was no slouch in the rebellious department, either.

He often forgot all of that when he held them, though, because Tari liked to tug on his hair and Angion was a cuddler.

"We have to do something about this," he told his niece. He was holding both of them, but her twin had fallen asleep over Kili's shoulder almost the moment he'd been picked up. "The family reputation is at stake, you know."

Tauriel tried to push his face away and huffed in frustration when it went only so far.

"I suppose that's a start," he said.


	6. Chapter 6

"We came from another direction," Kíli said. "Last time we came, I mean."

Morwinyon watched as he shaded his eyes, searching the cliff face that ringed Imladris.

"From there, I think," he said, pointing.

"I have never been," Morwinyon confessed, and Kíli shrugged.

"It's pretty. I don't think they liked us much."

Morwinyon snorted. "Alia said there was a ford along the river but that we would meet guards and scouts first."

"I haven't seen any."

Morwinyon turned slowly in a circle, frowning. She had not seen any either, and usually she would have - or heard something, or smelled them. Something niggled at the back of her mind, not unlike Mirkwood or Erebor. No, Erebor had been more possessive than dark. It was Mirkwood that had always wanted her dead - this was still not the same as that. A warning,maybe.

But what darkness could lurk in Imladris?

It grew stronger down the river. "I want to look at something," she said.

Kíli shrugged and followed when she started walking. They walked for some time: the river's banks rose, and more trees lined the sides, with plenty of branches tangled together in the water.

"We're leaving Rivendell proper, you know," Kíli pointed out.

"We were not in Imladris proper," she retorted, but something caught her eye. It was a dead horse, a huddle of rags tangled around its feet, bumping gently against a large tangle of branches and leaves. The branches themselves looked fresh. Farther down there might have been a second tangle, and a second horse, and a second pile of rags. She slid down the bank to get a better look.

When she reached out to touch it, though, the _something_ at the back of her mind that had been growing stronger flared. She flinched back just as Kíli said from above, "We're all friends here."

Morwinyon looked up and came face-to-face with an arrowhead. She stood slowly, boots sinking into the mud of the riverbank, hands held out at her sides. "We seek an audience with the Lord of Imladris," she said in Sindarin. "Alia of the Dunedain has sent us."

"And yet you travel south of Imladris, when you were nearly to the ford," the elf aiming his arrow at Morwinyon said. He, and the rest of their sudden company, wore hoods, but so did Morwinyon and Kíli. "That does not speak of a wish for an audience."

"There was a shadow in my mind," Morwinyon replied. It was what Alia's predecessor had called it, when Morwinyon tried to explain. It was as good a description as any. "I wanted to see what it was that might have threatened Imladris, when it should be a place of peace."

"This dwarf is not Dunedain," another elf said.

"What would you do if I claimed I was?" Kíli asked.

"He is my brother," Morwinyon said. "He lives with the Dunedain for my sake."

The first elf lowered his bow, but the four others did not. He held out his hand as if expecting something.

Morwinyon blinked at him for a moment before she remembered Alia's scroll. "It is sealed," she said, handing it over. "It should remain that way, until Lord Elrond lays eyes on it."

"Your _braid,_ mistress," the elf said, though he accepted the scroll. Kíli made an annoyed sound, but Morwinyon slowly pulled forward her widow's braid. He picked it up and examined the clasp despite Kíli's protest.

"That is the height of rudeness," Morwinyon told the elf stiffly. It was not, of course, amongst elves, but to dwarves he might as well have been groping her. It had been rude just to request it, really.

"My apologies," the elf said, though he did not drop the braid for another long moment. "But I would hate to think someone married into the line of Durin - even a cousin - had turned to the dark."

He had been using the time to look her over, rather than the braid, then. He would know she was an elf, and yet he had said nothing scathing about her marrying a dwarf or calling one her brother yet.

"I am Mirwen," she said.

"And I Elrohir," the elf replied, and she managed not to react overmuch. This would be her distant cousin - she had met him once, when he and his siblings had ridden out to look for her mother, but she had been small then. She tried to see if he recognized her name, but she could not see under his hood well enough.

"They are friends," Elrohir called up. "Though late, if you intended to come to council with my father."

"We do not come to council exactly," Kíli said in slow but correct Sindarin as Elrohir accepted the hand of one of his people to climb back up the bank. Morwinyon used a tree branch.

Elrohir exhibited no surprise at a dwarf speaking Sindarin, though his fellows shifted a little.

"The clans have asked me to come and ask after Aragorn, son of Arathorn," Morwinyon said. "They wish to know what sort of man he is."

"And they sent you," Elrohir said.

In Quenya, to prove a point, Morwinyon replied, "The council decided I was the most qualified."

Elrohir laughed. "Maybe so," he said in the same language, to her surprise. "It is rare to find someone so fluent in the language as you outside my father's halls." He even softened his s's correctly, as she had been taught by her mother and brother and as so many people did not do.

Kíli, when she looked over at him, rolled his eyes ostentatiously. "Show off," he said in Khuzdul.

Morwinyon shrugged, and returned to Sindarin. "And then I felt the shadow, and I wanted to know what it was that could trouble Imladris so deeply that I _could_ feel it."

"You see before you the remains of a mortal king," Elrohir said. "Or, rather, what he left behind. The stink of it will not leave."

"I'd suggest removing the dead horses," Kíli said.

"The land remembers," Elrohir continued. "The river does. As do we. Were it not for Glorfindel, all hope would have been lost."

 _Glorfindel?_ "As heroic as ever," Morwinyon said. A legendary hero dwelled in Imladris. She supposed she should not be surprised.

She had fought a dragon, she reminded herself. She was all but lorekeeper for a Dunedain clan. She had nothing to feel inferior about, except that Glorfindel had killed a balrog and she had only blinded a dragon.

Glorfindel had not survived childbirth, though. Glorfindel had actually died with the balrog, even if he had come back. Morwinyon felt better even if she knew it was petty.

Elrohir sent his people back out into the woods and beckoned for Morwinyon and Kíli to follow him.

* * *

Her first real look at Imladris was overwhelming. Her father's halls had been grand, all polished roots and torchlight, and Erebor had been full of vaulted halls and sweeping stairs, awe-inspiring in the sheer skill and effort needed to create it. Imladris glowed. The leaves of the trees that appeared to have grown and twisted themselves into dwellings showed all colors of leaves that could possibly exist: the deep, dark green of Mirkwood's towering trees, the reds she saw in autumn farther north, orange, yellow, spring green, every color in between except brown. The trunks themselves were pale and delicate looking even when they merged to form walls and halls and rooms, and the waterfalls that seemed to be everywhere lent a sort of bell-like backdrop to everything, as if music was forever playing. Nothing at all had any sharp edges.

The darkness was all but gone, too. Morwinyon felt only welcome, aside from the shadow sitting like a vanishing aftertaste.

"It's overwhelming still," Kíli said in Khuzdul. Elrohir did not turn, but she had no doubt he was listening intently, trying to puzzle out the dwarf language.

"Yes," Morwinyon agreed, also in Khuzdul, but she did not mean the beauty. The woods and downs of the north had their own beauty and their own welcome, but never had a place felt as if it wanted her to sit and rest and never leave. She was not sure what to make of it. It seemed too soft to be real.

"My father will be glad to see a representative of the Dunedain," Elrohir said, after allowing them a moment to absorb the sight. "He was saddened that they did not come to council."

"None?" Morwinyon asked, frowning. Surely some of the southern clans had sent someone?

"Only Aragorn," Elrohir said. "Gondor sent someone, of course, but the old blood does not run so strong there." She thought he wanted to add something else, but he did not do so.

"I heard that someone declared him," she said.

"He declared himself long ago," Elrohir retorted with surprising heat. "Only no one will come to him. Do you know why?"

Because of you, Morwinyon did not say. Because I am outsider enough, but still they trust me because I have lived and fought with them for nearly sixty years. Because they do not know him, however many times he has gone to battle with Rohan or Gondor. Because he returns so often to Imladris, where some of his kin dwell but not all. Because he has not seen his mother's people for an age.

And possibly because he has no close female relative to introduce him, save an elf they do not know.

"I do not know for sure," she said, lying only little. "I have been sent to know him better."

"For that you will have to speak to my father," Elrohir said, and led them in.

* * *

When Morwinyon was four years old and her mother disappeared, Elrond and his family had descended on Mirkwood in a storm of frightening competence and steely gazes. The children, Elrohir, Elladan, and Arwen, had not stayed in Thranduil's halls for long. They had taken a guide each and ridden out to search.

Elrond had stayed, though. For six months he had managed Mirkwood while Thranduil locked himself away with maps and plans and Legolas and Tauriel and Inwiel and Nurchon had gone farther and farther afield, searching for their missing queen.

Morwinyon could not say she had disliked him. She might even have liked him, at the time: She had been four years old, and he had been kind. He had not been her father or brother or mother or Tauriel, but he had been kind, and he had been able to find her when her other minders had thrown up their hands and gone back to other tasks. Many of the stories she knew of Laeriel had come from him, while he sat at a desk and kept her busy while he worked out accounts or written complaints. Then he and his children had left, and she had been alone but for Tauriel in all the ways that counted.

Before that, she knew he had come for a short time after she was born, to congratulate his cousin and make sure mother and child were well. She knew that Elrond had loved Laeriel, and that Laeriel had loved Elrond, and that sometimes people were surprised that they liked each other at all.

"She helped to raise me," Elrond said of Laeriel once, bent over a sloppily written missive while Morwinyon hid under the desk at his feet, arms wrapped around her knees. "I like to think I turned out acceptably, so maybe she was even good at it. Some people think her difficult, but, well. Some people think your father difficult too."

Maybe that was why Morwinyon had always thought of Laeriel a little bit in terms of Tauriel, even when evidence ran to the contrary. She knew now that stories were only part of the whole, and different people could do the same things for different reasons, and Laeriel, who would have chosen war, had hardly at all like Tauriel.

Morwinyon was not sure whether she should expect Elrond to recognize her or not, and she was not sure how she would feel if he did.

As Elrohir led them through the outdoor halls, Morwinyon wondered what they did when it rained. Maybe the sky was not so ill-mannered as to rain on Elrond's people? Out of curiosity she stopped to look out and up, thinking that maybe there was a canopy that could roll over the top, when she caught a glimpse of red hair below.

She always jumped at red hair these days. Even Alia, when Morwinyon was not specifically looking for her, was a surprise when she walked into view.

It was not Alia, obviously, and it was not Tauriel, just as obviously, but the owner of the coppery hair was not unknown to her.

"Kíli," she said, and Kíli followed her gaze.

She supposed they should have considered, when Elrond called a council of all the peoples of Middle Earth, that the dwarves would send someone as venerable as Gloin. He was, after all, a cousin off the direct line of Durin.

"Do you know Gloin?" Elrohir asked too casually, eyes on Kíli.

"Not well," Morwinyon said for both of them, as Kíli smiled tightly at Elrohir. "We know of him, of course."

"I am only curious," Elrohir said. "You do not seem to want to be seen, and you are cousins, after all. If only by marriage."

Morwinyon glared and said, "You were taking us to your father."

"So I was," Elrohir agreed. The rest of the short walk was tense but trouble-free, until Elrohir opened a set of doors with no fanfare and entered.

Morwinyon heard, "Back early? Is all well?" but did not pay attention to Elrohir's reply as she paused in the doorway itself.

Kíli said, "If I will be known you might as well be."

She stepped into the room.

"Welcome," Lord Elrond said, standing himself and coming out from behind his desk. "Forgive my surprise - we had no word of your coming."

"The Lady Mirwen came from the Dunedain clans to examine Estel," Elrohir said. He leaned a hip against the edge of the desk, arms crossed and hood down. She could see his typically Noldorin features now, along with his father's. She could also see his tilted eyebrow, as if he waited for a reaction.

"Mirwen," Elrond repeated, and shook his head. "I am afraid my foster son has departed, my lady. If you would like testaments as to his character-"

"From you?" Morwinyon asked before she could stop herself. She did not mean to be rude, but what exactly did Elrond believe the Dunedain wanted to know that he could tell them?

"From anyone in Rivendell," he said, and she realized he was speaking westron in an effort to include Kíli. "But, forgive me, what name of yours is Mirwen?"

She sighed. Mirwen was more common than Morwinyon, but not by much. She should have used something different, if she had wanted her disguise to last longer.

"My father gave it to me," she said, and reached up to push her hood back and let her hair free - or at least her braids. She should also have undone the braids if she wanted to look more elven, but it had not occurred to her until now. "My mother named me Morwinyon."

Elrond turned around and sat back in his desk chair.


	7. Chapter 7

Elrond's shock had worn off by the time Elrohir had called the rest of the family and dragged in enough chairs. Arwen eyed Morwinyon as critically as Elrohir, but Elladan and Elrond peppered her with questions about her survival almost gleefully. When she mentioned the twins Elrond's entire face lit up.

It was disconcerting.

"And you, master dwarf?" Arwen asked finally, when Morwinyon had answered so many questions she had forgotten what all her answers had been. "We thank you of course for returning our cousin to us, but we wonder why she was gone so long."

"She called him brother," Elrohir commented. "I do not think she meant metaphorically."

"Morwinyon married my brother," Kili said. "You can tell by her braid she's a widow."

Elrond's face fell for the first time, and he murmured a quiet condolence.

"My family has taken excellent care of me," Morwinyon said firmly, and Elrond's face fell further. She had not meant to imply that Elrond was not family.

Kili nudged her elbow with his own - a feat, considering the distance of their chairs - and smiled crookedly when she looked at him.

Well, when had Elrond and his family really been family to her? They had left as soon as it was clear Laeriel was not going to be found.

That was not entirely fair. She tried to rein in her unreasonable irritation, but she was more closely related to Dis and Kili, even if through marriage, than she was to her closest cousins - Elrond was something like Morwinyon's third cousin removed once or twice. She would have to sit down and write out the family tree to be sure.

"If you had arrived earlier your brother could have known of this happy event," Elrohir said, which made Morwinyon feel guiltier. Of the people she had not contacted, Legolas deserved it least. It had not, after all, been his job to parent her, so she should not have felt bitter that he parented her so little.

It had been Tauriel's job even less, but she had done the lion's share anyway.

"I did not know he was here at all," Morwinyon said truthfully. "Perhaps I should go after him when my task is done."

"And your task is?" Arwen asked.

Morwinyon did not sigh. She wanted to, but she did not. "I am to determine the character of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and why he should - or should not, I suppose - have the support of the clans of the Dunedain, when he does not live with us or ride with us."

All four of her cousins exchanged glances, and Morwinyon realized she had said 'us' instead of 'them'. Aragorn had not lived with her or ridden with her, though. She let it stand.

"My foster son is an honorable man," Elrond said, stiff for the first time. "And a good one, and I have seen to it that he is knowledgeable in the ways of ruling."

"But he has not," Morwinyon pointed out. "Ruled, I mean. He may be all things good and all things true and all things honorable, but what kind of prince does not seek to know his kin who he would rule?"

"What kind of princess seeks not to let her kin know her?" Elrohir asked.

Morwinyon did not have an answer aside from _the kind that is me,_ but admitting it would be as good as admitting she regretted her decisions, which she did not.

She did not think she did, anyway.

"Your father does not come out from his wood," Elrond said into the silence. "Will you not go to him?"

"My father has not come out from the wood since my mother went missing," Morwinyon replied, for this she had an answer to. "My father would not let me leave the wood - he would have kept me, like the treasure he named me, and you would have let him."

There was silence again, until she asked finally, "Am I wrong?"

"No," Arwen said when her father did not reply.

"It is difficult not to understand him," Elrond said.

"Perhaps if I had asked, or insisted, or-" Morwinyon shook her head. "It does not matter. He could barely look at me, and when he did he saw only that I was my mother's daughter, and not a person on my own. When he came to the mountain he would not listen even a little and he would have fought my kin when I asked him not to, for some gems, for those treasures we all have lost, because they were more important."

"We have more treasures to lose, some of us," Elrond said.

"We all have treasures left to lose," Morwinyon agreed, "but I am not a treasure. I am his daughter, and I am not a thing to be lost. Where I choose to go, _I_ choose."

Arwen softened nearly imperceptibly and looked at her father, who in turn looked down at his desktop.

"Maybe I should have told him I lived still," Morwinyon said, "but I was selfish and irresponsible. Would you suggest now that I should rule anything?"

Elrohir frowned.

"Alia of the Dunedain has asked a service of me, and I will give it. I am best qualified to do so, you see. One might say uniquely qualified. You yourselves have listed the reasons."

Elrond stared at the desk still, as if answers were carved into it. Maybe they were. Elrohir leaned against Arwen's chair arm, and Arwen herself looked steadily at Morwinyon.

It was Elladan who said, "Ask after Estel all you like, Morwinyon. I do not think you will find any who speak ill of him here."

Elrohir barked a laugh, and added, "Speak to your brother when you can - he knows our brother well."

Morwinyon frowned and exchanged a glance with Kili. "My brother does?"

"Oh, yes," Elrohir said. "It was Legolas who declared him the king of Gondor and Arnor before the assembled council, after all."

* * *

"That wasn't so terrible," Kili said later, having taken over Morwinyon's bed. She stared out the window. "I mean, you got a lot off your chest."

"Says the dwarf who has not yet revealed his own identity."

"I don't think you were selfish or irresponsible," Kili said, and so she turned to look at him. "You made a promise. You kept it."

"It is kind of you to say so," Morwinyon said, coming over to flop gracelessly on the bed beside him. "You are biased, though, I think."

"Never."

She smiled up at the canopy. "I am selfish, you know. Or afraid maybe? The result is the same. I could have spared my brother grief, at least."

Kili said nothing.

"I do not regret much," she said. "Just that. Not the selfishness, or the irresponsibility. I regret hurting Legolas. He must already have been hurting, with Tauriel dead, and I probably made it worse."

"Are you sorry?" Kili asked. "Not about your brother. About leaving, or staying with us, maybe."

Morwinyon fiddled with her widow's braid, feeling Fili's clasp there. She had raised two children who loved her, and who loved their grandmother and their uncle and each other, and she could do things. She was useful with the Dunedain, and she was useful with Tari and Angion and Dis and Kili.

"Not even a little," she said.

* * *

Messengers of the enemy did not often make themselves from previously formless shadow, but this one had, and in Thranduil's throne room. It was nothing but a voice wrapped in smoke and darkness, but they all watched it warily.

"I have no curse to put on you, Thranduil of the Greenwood," the black shape said, sounding all-too amused. "Your curse is on you already. But if you would hear it-"

"I would not," Thranduil snapped.

"As you will. Ever your kind walks unknowing into our plans."

A tug on his robe made Thranduil look down. His daughter clung to it with one hand, though she stood straight and looked at the black shape curiously, head cocked to one side.

"Morwinyon," Thranduil murmured, smoothing a hand over the top of her head, "you should be in bed."

The thing chuckled. "What a name! How high you reach for your child, Thranduil Elf-King."

"It is my amilesse," Morwinyon said, voice high-pitched with youth but unwavering. "Therefore did my mother give it to me."

"A wise woman, your mother?"

"Yes," Morwinyon retorted.

It chuckled again. "Be careful with that one, King. My master enjoys pretty little trinkets that he can display."

"Go back to bed, Morwinyon," Thranduil ordered.

She flicked a glance up at him through her lashes, but returned her steady regard to the messenger. "I would not make a good display," she said.

"That, elfling, I do not believe." Teeth, suddenly visible, flashed in a twisted grin. "Your father's treasures must be great indeed, to let you wander so freely."

"Morwinyon," Thranduil snapped, harsh enough that she jumped. "Legolas, take your sister."

She took her brother's hand obediently, smiling at something he murmured to her as he tugged her back towards the door.

"Keep her close, while you can," the messenger said. "But in the end, daughters belong with their mothers. Don't you agree?"


	8. Chapter 8

Morwinyon stood with Kili near the entrance to Rivendell proper, feeling more like a child about to be chastised for wrongdoing than she had with Elrond.

"He will not be too angry with you, will he?" she asked.

Kili made a face.

"He will be pleased that you are alive," she said firmly, clasping her hands together in front of her.

Kili made another face, but before she could reassure either of them further Gloin's party stepped into the courtyard, geared and ready to depart. Morwinyon and Kili had left it until the last possible moment, to Elrohir's clear amusement.

Gloin's face registered no recognition, which was when Morwinyon realized that Kili had edged behind her.

"Did Elrond need something else?" Gloin demanded, crossing his arms. "I've already given him my son for this fool errand."

Morwinyon filed that away for later and said, "I bring you glad tidings, Gloin, son of Groin."

He squinted up at her, and his gaze lit on her widow's braid and Fili's clasp. "Tidings," he said slowly, raising his eyes to her face.

"The tidings are me," Morwinyon admitted, and stepped aside. "But also I bring you Kili, son of Dis, who I did not allow to perish on the mountain."

Gloin stared past her for a long moment, and burst into laughter.

* * *

"The two of you," he managed later, after they had been settled back into a guesthouse and he had laughed long and loud, wiping tears that Morwinyon suspected were not entirely mirthful from his eyes. "Just standing there, looking like you expected to be sent to pump a bellows or sort ore!"

"I would be useless at both tasks," Morwinyon said slowly, watching him, but that just sent him into further gales of laughter. She looked to Kili, who looked more resigned than anything. She remembered Gloin as a grumpy stoic, though not so much as his brother Oin.

"You are not angry?" she asked slowly.

"Spitting mad," Gloin said, still chuckling, and she and Kili exchanged a look. "I will be when I've stopped being pleased, anyway. Dis is going to jump out from behind a curtain, isn't she?"

"Dis stayed with the children," Morwinyon replied without thinking, and Gloin, much as Elrond had, sat down.

Going over their doings was easier the second time, though Gloin muttered more over the twins' lack of appropriate birthing gifts than Elrond had.

"And now we come here, because Alia asked," Morwinyon concluded. Kili had let her do most of the talking. He had watched Gloin as if expecting something not entirely pleasant, though Morwinyon could not understand why.

"We owe the Dunedain a debt, then," Gloin said. "For sheltering our prince's heirs. It's good that we sent Gimli with the son of Arathorn, I suppose."

"Aragorn, son of Arathorn, does not lead the Dunedain," Morwinyon told him very precisely. "Not yet, anyway."

"And Dain rules Erebor," Kili said. "We know it."

Morwinyon blinked. Kili was responding to something she had not known needed responding to: what had Dain to do with anything?

"Your brother's heirs live," Gloin said. "They are the rightful heirs of Erebor, for their father was King Under the Mountain, and his uncle was, and his father-"

"I know my bloodline, Gloin," Kili snapped.

"My children do not wish to rule that they have told me," Morwinyon said.

"And?" Gloin asked. "I swore to Thorin Oakenshield and his heirs, Princess, and I swore to your husband after."

"And now you are sworn to Dain," Kili pointed out. "It isn't anything you need to worry about."

"Isn't it?"

Kili leaned forward, hands gripping the too-large arms of the elven-designed and elven-crafted chair. "That mountain will kill us all," he said, meeting Gloin's eyes. "All of Thror's line that sought to keep it died. I will not put my niece and nephew on a throne that spells their doom."

"You lived," Gloin pointed out.

Kili shook his head and sat back. "Let Dain have the joys of Erebor."

Gloin sighed. "The children are what, sixty? That is full majority, Kili. You cannot speak for them."

"If you declare for them they will not come," Morwinyon said, reaching out a hand to lay it on Kili's shoulder. "Not if Kili advises otherwise."

"And what of Dis, who stayed with them?" Gloin asked, and his mouth twisted into a sad smile when Kili frowned. "You know your mother, Kili. Will she advise otherwise, if her line can once more hold the lands of her forebears?"

"You do not know their names," Morwinyon said. She did not care for the idea that her children might be threatened, however well-meaning the threat might be. "You can do nothing without their names."

Gloin looked at her. "I know why you fled Mirkwood," he told her, settling back into his own chair. Kili jerked as if stung, and glared. "Would you have liked all of your options laid before you then? Or did you prefer your father giving you so few?"

The air left her lungs as if Gloin had punched her. It certainly felt like it.

"That's not fair," Kili said.

"Isn't it?" Gloin asked. "I let my son go into danger a week ago, because it was needed and because he chose to do so. What of your children, Princess? Will you keep them hidden with the Dunedain because you fear for them?"

Kili nearly threw himself from his chair when he stalked out. Morwinyon watched him go, and Gloin watched her.

"I do not know their true names," Morwinyon told him in Khuzdul. "I gave Dis their naming there, for I still did not know Khuzdul then, and Kili gave them their essë - their father-names."

The elvish word sounded strange, mixed in with the Khuzdul.

Gloin raised an eyebrow.

"He named them Tauriel and Angion," she said, without bothering to translate. "I named them Amdirel and Faelon. They will know you come with my knowledge if you call them so."

She stood to go, but at the door she said, "If they do not wish to go, Dis will not let you take them."

"You have more faith in Dis' maternal instincts than I do, Princess," Gloin replied. "You forget, I know her well."

Morwinyon laughed with much less mirth than he had earlier. "I know her better," she told him, and left.

* * *

"My mother would have shoved Fili out the door with both hands if necessary," Kili said when she joined him on the bank of the river.

"People grow," Morwinyon said, sitting beside him. The water ran swiftly here - no ford for dark riders. "Anyway, I would have done much to be shoved out the door with both hands."

Kili snorted. "She wasn't like that with me. She always kept me close - I want to think she's more like she was with me, with Tari and Nion."

"She wanted you close because you were the one she could keep, I think," Morwinyon said. "Still she let you go, when you wanted."

"She let me go to claim the mountain," he corrected her. "I'm not sure it's the same."

Morwinyon considered, drawing her knee up underneath her chin. She did not think her father would have let her go, even to claim her mother's jewels. She did not know which made a parent better - letting someone go in order to claim something you wanted desperately, or keeping someone even when there was something you desperately wanted that they might claim.

What kind of parent did that make her, giving Gloin tacit permission to drag her children into danger for something she did not even desperately want?

She did not know. She might never know. She supposed you could only try your best.

"Maybe we should go ask our questions about Aragorn," she said.

Kili snorted, but he got up and waited for her to do the same so they could walk back to the Halls of Elrond.


	9. Chapter 9

"Elladan was correct," Morwinyon said a week later. She sat with a piece of parchment before her, deciding what to write to Alia. "No one has even one word of Aragorn that is not praise."

"I couldn't even wheedle out childhood pranks," Kili said, once more flopped on her bed. "I'm really good at wheedling out childhood pranks."

The elves of Rivendell had closed ranks, in the way only the elves of Rivendell could. So Morwinyon assumed, anyway: her father's Silvan could be close-mouthed and wary. Never had she seen them turn such blandly smiling faces on interlopers that the interlopers decided to leave. Never had she seen eyes linger on those of the Silvan with scars, either, but here she supposed that here Elrond would heal such hurts before they had time to scar.

Doubtless he could have saved her eye, and perhaps brought Fili back to life too, she thought sourly. The Dunedain had never stared sidelong at her scars, but then, many had their own.

"Maybe if I was better fed I'd be more creative," Kili said. "I thought I'd prepared myself, but I'd forgotten."

Morwinyon crumpled up her parchment and threw it at him. He did not so much as flinch when it hit between his eyes and bounced off. She had practiced long and hard to regain some semblance of her former aim, but here in a room she had been in for over a week she could make the calculations without pause: it was on new ground that she still had difficulty with distance. Shooting a dragon in the eye would not be a feat she repeated unless the dragon was kind enough to confront her in a place she knew well and gave her a moment to calculate their size.

"Who haven't we talked to?" Kili asked, staring up at the ceiling. "We've canvassed the whole of Rivendell, surely."

Someone knocked at the door. Morwinyon rose to answer it with a sigh, and met Arwen's eyes.

"May I come in?" Arwen asked.

Morwinyon stood aside, and Kili sat up, crossing his legs underneath him. Morwinyon closed the door and joined him on the bed, leaving the desk chair for Arwen.

"Your asking after Estel will have given you no worries of his suitability," Arwen said.

"I worry to meet him," Morwinyon replied, exchanging a glance with Kili. "Such a paragon as he will surely be intimidating."

Arwen ducked her head, but Morwinyon thought she saw a smile. "I am hardly unbiased."

"Why do you come to us, cousin?" Morwinyon asked. "Is it only to tell us something we already know?"

"He is your cousin too," Arwen pointed out, still looking at her lap.

"All royalty in Middle Earth are in some way my cousin," Morwinyon retorted.

"I'm not related to at least three of the dwarf lords," Kili offered.

"Rohan," Arwen murmured.

"Who rules the easterlings?" Kili asked.

"Most royalty," Morwinyon amended. "What do you want, Arwen?"

"You should meet him," Arwen said, still without looking up. "You should form your own opinions."

Morwinyon let herself fall back onto the bed. Kili shook his head at her and said to Arwen, "Unless Aragorn has appeared sometime during the last hour, meeting him is out of the question. Unless your father lied to us when he said he sent him on a quest of great importance."

Arwen shook her head. "My father does not lie. You should go after Estel. How better to learn of him than to travel with him?"

Something in her tone made Morwinyon sit up again and examine her, and Arwen looked up and met her eyes.

"I worry for him," Arwen said. "I worry for Middle Earth too, but I worry most for him."

"You want me to bodyguard your beloved," Morwinyon said flatly.

"You wish for insight into his character?" Arwen asked. "I will give you that. I will have my brothers tell you his every waking moment from boyhood. I have all of his letters to me - you may read them at your leisure, from his teens to only three months ago. He has written to me since before he loved me, and before I loved him. Only please, help him? You have lived when others have not, you have triumphed where others have not-"

She cut herself off, hands clutching convulsively together in her lap.

Kili said, "It isn't that I don't sympathize, my lady, but he has left already, and we don't know his goal."

"I know his goal," Arwen said, eyes going hard. "My father tried to keep it from me, to keep me from worry, but Elladan told me. They journey to Mordor. They will destroy Sauron's ring if they can. I would go, but - well. I have a duty here."

Morwinyon, whose reading on the subject had been in Mirkwood, frowned. Sauron's ring had been lost after the war for it, had it not? She supposed it could have been found. Arwen had no reason to lie.

"They?" she asked.

"His companions," Arwen replied, sounding surprised. "Gimli, son of Gloin, and Mithrandir, and hobbits aplenty. Your brother goes too."

Of course Legolas went, Morwinyon thought. She tried not to be bitter and failed. Legolas had always been able to go and to do things she would not have been allowed. Who was Aragorn, though, that the prince of Mirkwood would declare him king and then go with him into danger?

That argument would not likely sway the clans. Alia maybe, because Legolas was Morwinyon's brother, but no one else. She could write that Aragorn worked well with other nations. When had she begun to think of ways to present Aragorn so that he might be accepted? When she learned her brother had spoken for him, probably, and now her cousin was in love.

Morwinyon looked at Kili, who shrugged. Their message to Dis, sent with Gloin's messenger, would at least assure her they were alive for the moment. It was becoming rapidly clear that they could learn no more in Rivendell. They could send another note to Dis with the missive to Alia.

"Do you know their route?" Morwinyon asked.

* * *

Arwen did not know their intended route, but she knew the destination and could make a good guess. Morwinyon packed Aragorn's letters away with a pang and a sack of lembas made by Arwen's own hands. Arwen's expression did not waver as Morwinyon wrapped waybread and letters carefully.

"I will bring them back," Morwinyon assured her.

"Bring Estel back," Arwen said. "You can keep the letters if you bring me the person."

It was on the tip of Morwinyon's tongue to ask if she could keep the letters if she did not bring the person, but she gripped Fili's clasp and decided not to.

Elrond met them at the gates with no retinue. Not even Arwen was there: she had had to leave to deal with a problem in the storerooms. Bandages were running thin, or being nibbled on, or something. Morwinyon had not been too clear on the details. Arwen, clearly, kept busy as one of her father's stewards.

"I will not ask you not to go," Elrond said. "Your mother would not have stopped, if she set her mind to something."

"I know already that both my parents were stubborn," Morwinyon replied, hefting her pack.

Elrond laughed. "Well, then. Know also that so are the rest of us, and we will not believe you dead without a body this time."

Kili snickered, and Morwinyon kicked his ankle.

"We would prefer not to find a body," Elrond said, somber now.

Would you? Morwinoyn wondered. My mother's body was never found, and it has caused all sorts of anguish, and, too, you say people sorrowed over my nonexistent corpse.

She knew what Elrond meant, though, so she said, "I will endeavor not to die."

"And Estel - I have had the raising of his forefathers, and each I sent back when they were grown, to live or die, but most have had one or another of their parents still. Estel-"

"I have children, my lord," Morwinyon said. "I know what you would ask. I cannot promise anything more than I promised your daughter."

"No promises and no oaths," Elrond said, with an expression that might have been a smile. "Fair enough."

Morwinyon hesitated. Something about Elrond was welcoming even when he was sad, and he had lost his wife and countless children he had at least helped to raise, and he gave Arwen work to do and let her ride out if she truly wished to, and his sons too, and he had loved her mother.

Elrond had told Morwinyon stories when she was small and Tauriel was not there. Morwinyon stepped forward and very carefully hugged him.

He hugged her much less carefully back.

"I will do what I can," she told him. "I do not know that it will be much."

He held her away a little and examined her face. "I do not know that you know how to do 'not much'," he said, mouth quirking. "None of your parents ever did. Even nothing they did with considerable flair."

He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, and she realized he had to raise himself on his toes a little to do it. Elrond's presence was such that she had not noticed she was taller. The kiss landed on the band that held her eye covering, but the heat burned through it. The ever-present little ache in her eye-socket, as if the muscles there were always tired from holding up something that should have been supported, eased.

She had thought she was as healed as she was going to be, and she was not sure she liked that her own body had not taken care of things as it apparently should have.

Elrond said modestly, as if he could read her mind, "I am very good at what I do."

Morwinyon snorted, patted his forearm awkwardly, and pulled away. He let her go, but when Kili stopped just out of the valley to look back she did too. Elrond still stood at the entrance of his home, watching.


	10. Chapter 10

Fili woke to familiar quiet sounds. Tauriel never made much noise when she had bad dreams, but sixty years living in each other's pockets meant he heard her anyway. He rolled out of the too-large human bed and fumbled with flint and steel to light a candle. The light would wake her more easily than him touching her or calling her name - he had learned that lesson early on, when he had been thrown into a tree before she had properly woken.

He'd sprained her wrist grabbing it when she had woken him. They learned by trial and error.

"I apologize," Tauriel said now as she always did, blinking at him in the candlelight. "I did not mean to wake you."

Fili handed her a waterskin instead of telling her she didn't need to apologize, and instead of asking her about her dreams he said, "Strange, that orcs would leave so much intact."

"The innkeeper does not think they were orcs," Tauriel pointed out, swinging her legs over the edge of her own bed and taking a long drink of water. "He said tall things in robes."

"Creepy, like," Fili finished. The innkeeper had been pleased to see an elf, especially one who asked after the trouble he'd had. The Prancing Pony was in Bree, and usually Bree didn't see much trouble from orcs or goblins. Bree's trouble came in regular squabbling, and Tauriel and Fili were not interested in the squabbling of men. This incident, when they heard of it, had been unusual enough to pique their interest.

"This was not orc behavior," Tauriel said. "It is too focused. Too quiet, even."

"Unless the enemy has made new orcs," Fili pointed out, and winced. Tauriel had explained to him what making new orcs involved, when he had told her he was glad Morwinyon and Kili had been dragged off because it meant that Morwinyon at least might still be alive.

"Do not hope for that," she had snapped, and he had learned to hope they had only been eaten.

The innkeeper hadn't been very helpful the night before, but it had been late and he had been tired. Maybe Tauriel could get more out of him this morning, when fewer people clogged the common area. Fili could and had charmed information out of plenty of people, but Butterbur had seemed happier to see Tauriel the night before. They learned why when they dragged themselves down the stairs.

"One of those rangers," Butterbur said. "Hustled out a brace of hobbits like no one's business, and hobbits are my business, I tell you."

Hobbits? Fili looked at Tauriel. She shrugged.

"And all of them looking for Gandalf, who I've not seen for months," the innkeeper continued. "He's always mixed up in something, isn't he? But it's never brought _things_ to my inn before."

Tauriel nodded sympathetically.

"But I've seen plenty of elves in my day." Here Butterbur pulled out a wine glass, inspected it, and plopped in front of Tauriel. "None of you like a good ale, but that's all right. I have to sell wine too, don't I?"

He poured. Tauriel sipped politely as Butterbur slid a tankard of ale in front of Fili.

"Anyway," he said, mollified when Tauriel made an approving noise and Fili drank half the tankard in one gulp. "You lot, you know how to deal with rangers. Never had a problem with them before myself, but they're a raggedy bunch, living up there in tents and clans and all, and then he takes away some of my best custom and leaves me with…"

Fili waited, allowing Butterbur to collect himself. Bree dealt with the occasional goblin band on the roads, but goblins hadn't gotten past the walls in years. Butterbur was used to sending his people out to bring sentries ale, not hiding in his own office while screams and black-coated figures with large swords floated through his inn.

"Did this ranger have a name?" Tauriel asked, which was why Fili usually did the sweet-talking. Tauriel was kind, but impatient with missishness.

"Strider," Butterbur said, shaking off the memories. "He's a reasonable fellow, aside from that. Always pays his bill."

Fili wormed a description of ranger, hobbits, and strange creepy things out of Butterbur and Tauriel slid him some silver to cover their room and his trouble. Butterbur further informed them that he thought the ranger said something of Rivendell.

"It does not sound as if they will return," Tauriel assured Butterbur. "To me it sounds as if they were chasing something. This Strider may have done you a favor."

"Hmmph," Butterbur said, and slid an extra meat pie into the bag of food they purchased.

Tauriel wouldn't eat it, but Fili enjoyed meat pies enough for the both of them. He munched on it as they started down the road.

"Hobbits," Tauriel said.

"Hobbits," Fili agreed after he swallowed his mouthful. "Always with the hobbits. Did you ever meet Bilbo?"

"Once," Tauriel said. "He gave Thranduil Lady Laeriel's jewels."

"The ones left," Fili said, pressing a hand to his chest where the necklace hung, warm and comforting, under his shirt.

"That is yours," Tauriel replied. "Not Lady Laeriel's. Not anymore, anyway."

Fili shrugged and tossed her an apple.

* * *

"Is it as you remembered it?" Tauriel asked. They stood staring down at Rivendell, neither one quite on the path.

"Mostly," Fili said. "You?"

"I have never visited Rivendell before," Tauriel said, staring hungrily. "Once I thought to bring Morwinyon here, to her cousins, but Thranduil would not hear of it. Lady Laeriel went missing on the road."

"Thranduil has kin here?" Fili asked. If Tauriel had wanted to bring Morwinyon they couldn't be as unpleasant as his father-in-law, but that was, in Fili's estimation, a low bar to clear.

Tauriel shook her head and started down the path. Fili followed. "Lord Elrond and his kin are Lady Laeriel's cousins on her mother's side. I think."

"Are they as…" Fili trailed off, trying to think of a more complimentary description than he had been about to use. What Tauriel had told him about Laeriel wasn't uncomplimentary exactly, but it did not, to his ears, sound like ringing endorsements either.

"Lord Elrond is very hospitable, from what I know," Tauriel assured him. "Well, you met him."

Fili snorted.

* * *

An elf greeted them when they approached the gates. "Be welcome to Rivendell," they said in lightly accented Westron.

Tauriel bowed, hand over her heart, and Fili copied her. "Our thanks for the hospitality, sir," she replied in the same language. "I am Tauriel of the Greenwood."

She left it up to him to decide whether to give his actual name or make one up, which Fili felt was unsporting. He supposed Elrond might recognize him anyway.

"Fili, son of Dis," he said.

The elf blinked.

Tauriel said carefully, "Fili has had the honor of meeting Lord Elrond before. If we might ask to meet him again-"

The elf spun on his heel and shouted something up at a window in Sindarin, too fast for Fili to catch. He knew some Sindarin. He just knew it when it was spoken slowly.

The window swung open, revealing another elf, this one with hair as dark as Morwinyon's but very little of Morwinyon's features in her face. Her eyes were light, for one thing, and the lids had an extra crease that Morwinyon's face was an oval too, not like Morwinyon's squarer jaw.

Tauriel said, "I see you have heard the name."

The elf who had opened the window ducked away from it, and moments later she came rushing into the courtyard.

"I didn't realize I was so infamous," Fili muttered as the elf woman came to a stop before him.

"Fili, son of Dis, who was nephew to Thorin Oakenshield?" she asked.

"Yes," Fili said slowly, looking at Tauriel. Tauriel shrugged helplessly. He looked back at the elf.

The elf put her hands on her hips, looking down an elegant nose at him, and said, "Your wife believes you dead. Is there a reason you have let her think so?"

Fili's first thought was that it was a joke, and tasteless in the extreme. He was about to tell her so when Tauriel made a choked off noise, and he looked back at her to see her covering her mouth with both hands, eyes wide with horror.

If Morwinyon wasn't dead, if they had _left her on the mountain…_

Fili didn't bother with dignity. He let himself drop to the ground.


	11. Chapter 11

The roaring in his ears subsided eventually. Tauriel knelt before him, telling him quietly what the elves had apparently told her already, hands on either side of his face. He realized dimly that she was repeating herself, to make sure that whenever he could pay attention he would have all of the information.

"I'm fine," he croaked, but he said it in Khuzdul. Tauriel went immediately from soothing him to glaring up at the other elf.

"It was poorly done," the elf admitted, kneeling beside Tauriel. "Forgive me please, cousin. Morwinyon truly believed you dead, and you walked in - I apologize."

"You _assumed,"_ Tauriel said. "I thought better of the daughter of Elrond."

"She thought to protect our cousin," someone else snapped, and Fili looked up. "You cannot upbraid her for that."

The elf who spoke stood next to another who looked so alike that Fili took a moment to make sure he wasn't seeing double before he remembered that Elrond had a pair of twin sons. Were all of his wife's relations this rude?

Tauriel looked as if she was about to begin snarling at everyone, but he wanted to hear more about Morwinyon and knew Tauriel did, too. "It's fine," he told her. "Everything is fine. Morwinyon lives."

Tauriel nodded, expression melting into a soft smile.

The other elves exchanged glances. "I will fetch Father," one of the brothers said, so Fili stood, brushing off two offers of assistance to do it, and wondered what these elves didn't want to tell him.

* * *

Later Arwen, apparently feeling guilty for her greeting, sat beside him while he absorbed the news that his brother, wife, and mother lived, and that he had two children.

"Twins?" he said. "You're sure?"

One of Arwen's brothers shrugged a shoulder. "I do not have a special knowledge of twin existence-"

Arwen muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'lies.'

"- _but,"_ the first continued, pointedly ignoring his sister, "Morwinyon did say there were two."

Tauriel all but vibrated in her seat beside him. Elrond, who had fallen silent after relating the state of Fili's family, looked on benevolently, as if the whole affair was his doing.

"Tauriel and Angion," Elrond said now. He sounded like he was trying to be helpful.

Fili wanted to snap that he knew their names, but of course he couldn't. He didn't know their truenames either - no one would, except Dis and the children themselves, if Morwinyon didn't know Khuzdul. Maybe Kili.

Were Tauriel and Angion their amilesse? Had Morwinyon decided they should have three names? He didn't _know._ Moreover, he wasn't sure he could ever learn: it wasn't done, to walk up to someone and ask their truename, even your child. Thorin had known Fili's, because Thorin had been there for his naming, but they had never spoken it.

" _Tauriel,"_ Tauriel herself said, sounding gleeful.

"We have to go to them," Fili said, but something niggled at his mind. "Wait, you only heard of them?"

"Only Morwinyon and Kili passed through here," Arwen replied. "She said that Lady Dis stayed with the children."

But where? Fili thought, mind scattering every which way. Dis, and by extension the rest of the family, could not have gone to the Lonely Mountain as that dwarf had implied: the news of twin heirs of Durin - twins! A male and female matched set! - would have travelled so far that even Fili and Tauriel would have heard of it then.

Elrond said, "They are with the Dunedain, and safe as anyone."

"But not safe with me," Fili said, hoping that Elrond would understand what he meant. He hadn't felt this torn since the mountain. He had to choose yet again, when he had thought he was finished with such difficult choices. Surely his responsibilities as a father outweighed those as a husband, but if Tauriel and Angion were safe…

They wouldn't know him, if he hared off into camp, shouting for his children. They wouldn't know Tauriel - Tauriel-his-sister. Dis might not be best pleased to see him after all these years either, and he didn't want to scare Tauriel-his-daughter or Angion.

The names were already confusing.

"We must find Morwinyon and Kili," Tauriel said, priorities clearer than his. "If they still think us dead, they will be suffering. We can stop that."

Fili, glad to have firm directions, agreed.

* * *

"Would you have married Kili?" Fili asked, weeks after the mountain. Tauriel looked sharply at him and away.

"I loved him," she said.

"That isn't what I asked."

Tauriel shook her head, but she did it slowly. "I think I would have," she said. "Not so quickly as you and Morwinyon, perhaps. But yes."

Fili nodded and went back to searching for something to eat. Supplies were scarce, since they had not wanted to take any from the mountain. Trying to sound careless and failing, he asked, "If you knew what would happen?"

She sighed. "I do not know. I like to think so. I thought I would even if it meant exile, before. I do not know what I would have done if I knew it meant exile alone."

She wasn't exactly _alone,_ not with him here, but he took her point.

"And you?" she asked after they had unearthed a few mushrooms and tufts of something green that Tauriel assured him was edible when stewed. They were leaning over tiny campfire, watching the bubbling mass.

"Me?"

"Would you have married Morwinyon? Knowing what would happen?"

"I'm not sure not marrying her would have changed anything about either of our actions," Fili said. "If not marrying her would have meant she wouldn't go after Azog, I would have left well enough alone."

"Morwinyon was always going to seek Azog," Tauriel said. "She is her mother's daughter - and mine too, a little, I suppose. I did not think to keep her in Mirkwood, but then, I think she would have left eventually. I heard Lady Laeriel say something once to Thranduil: a wolf can act but like a wolf."

"Morwinyon wasn't a wolf," Fili said. "She might have surprised you."

Tauriel raised an eyebrow. It startled a laugh from him.

"I would have married her anyway," he decided. "I'm not sure saying no would have occured to me."

He stayed very still when Tauriel reached out and carefully tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. "That should only be done by family."

She snatched back her hand immediately, blushing. "My apologies."

"None necessary," he said. "You would have married Kili." He reached deliberately out, giving her time to move away even if he knew that elves didn't rest such importance on this sort of thing. One of the braids holding her hair back from her face was skewed. He fixed it.

"Siblings," he said, "never let one another go out without decently near hair."

It was Tauriel's turn to laugh. "I have failed in my duties. Turn around and I will do my best."

He did.


	12. Chapter 12

"We could cut through the Redhorn Pass," Morwinyon said, surveying the options before them. "They probably did. Of course, if Balin really has retaken Moria as Gloin said, it might do us good to stop there, and they do have your cousin with them."

"More family reunions," Kili said, but he did not sound upset. He added, " _Our_ cousin."

"Our cousin," Morwinyon granted, and did not point out that Elrond and his children were then Kili's cousins as well as her own.

"The Redhorn should be first, though," Kili said. "If we're trying to catch up. Best of luck to us."

"They have four hobbits," Morwinyon pointed out as she resettled her pack. "They will be moving slowly anyway unless you think they are carried, which would mean they moved at the same pace, probably, and there are only two of us."

She did not point out that Gimli would doubtless slow the group, as Kili sometimes slowed her. It was not much, but she could move faster on her own than even any of the Dunedain. Kili knew that already.

"You could go ahead," Kili said. "I could catch up."

Morwinyon snorted. Kili shrugged and started into the mountains.

"I don't see any sign of travellers," he called days later. "Not for at least a day!" His words were snatched almost entirely away by the wind: Morwinyon would not have heard him if she had not been an elf.

The Redhorn pass was cold, windy, and chest-deep in snow for Kili. Morwinyon walked on top of the stuff, which was better for moving but did expose her more fully to the wind. At night they burrowed into the snow and packed it hard as a windbreak, but Morwinyon's whole body ached from the cold despite it, especially the arm she had broken in the fall with Smaug. Her scars at least didn't feel the chill even the rest of her hated it. She was adult enough to admit that they perhaps should have gone through Moria, but it was too late to turn back now.

Of course, if the party had died in the pass the entire point was moot. Surely, though, if they had Morwinyon and Kili would have found bodies: Legolas at least would not have sunk in the snow even if a fresh fall had covered him. It was better for everyone if Morwinyon assumed that her brother and his companions had made it through the pass.

She went back to Kili instead of waiting for him to catch up: standing still was even more uncomfortable than moving. When she reached him she said, "There was a recent snowfall. It could easily have covered tracks."

"Avalanche is more like it," Kili said, and did not point out that if it had indeed been an avalanche the group could have been swept off.

More days later they trudged through melting snow, trying to keep their stockings dry and avoiding the more slippery rocks and perpetual mud. It was warmer, at least, Morwinyon told herself. She had been through worse weather in the downs, which were always miserable.

There were signs of orcs at the pass' other side, but no others recent enough to be the fellowship.

"Definitely Moria," Morwinyon said. "Damn and double damn."

"We could have been fed and watered and had to deal with more awkward family reunions," Kili said. Morwinyon could not decide if he sounded sarcastic or not.

"Maybe Moria detained them," Morwinyon suggested. "We might not be too far behind if we start for it now."

Kili shrugged. "We'll pick up their trail, at least."

* * *

Morwinyon took longer watches on the nights to Moria. Kili needed the sleep more at the pace she set than she did. They saw more signs of orcs but ran into none: it began to make them nervous.

"I cannot help but feel as if something watches us," Morwinyon said, "but surely if it was an enemy we would have been set on by now."

"Could they know we're following your brother?" Kili asked, as if whoever or whatever was watching them might be listening too.

"If they knew that then there are spies in RIvendell," Morwinyon said. "I do not like that thought."

Kili shook his head, and Morwinyon fought the urge to run back to Rivendell. The memory of it was still soft around the edges, but she remembered home and cousins and Arwen. who had wanted the world saved but wanted her love saved too, and Elrond, who had healed Morwinyon because he loved her mother.

A compromise occurred to her. "We could try for Lothlorien," she said. "It is not _so_ far off from Moria, if my brother has already moved on. The lady Galadriel will have a way to warn Rivendell."

"Isn't it haunted?" Kili asked skeptically.

"Tauriel called it outside of time," Morwinyon said. "I do not know if that makes it haunted as you mean it, but Galadriel is my mother's cousin after some fashion."

Kili laughed. "Who isn't?"

"We could presume upon family more," she said, ignoring that. "She might also have more information of my brother's whereabouts, if we do not find him at first. She knows much, Tauriel said."

The shrug he gave her in return meant acquiescence, and he covered himself in his cloak and went to sleep.

* * *

"I hear of great joy in the Greenwood," Galadriel said into a lull during the council. "Laeriel has given birth – a healthy girl. Thranduil calls her Mirwen for the present."

"Great joy indeed," Saruman replied, but he did not sound overly interested.

The rest of the council was more enthused.

"That will please Laeriel," Elrond said. "She wanted a daughter. She has threatened to steal mine."

"The name will not stay, though," Gandalf chuckled. "She won't stand for it. 'Treasure' indeed."

"No," Galadriel agreed, looking through him. "She will not."

Celeborn touched the back of her hand gently. She smiled at him. "But nonetheless! A happy occurrence."

"We discuss the fate of Middle Earth here," Saruman said. "The name of a spare royal child is of little consequence to me."

Elrond frowned, and Gandalf shook his head, and Galadriel shrugged at them both. They returned to discussing the fate of Middle Earth.


	13. Chapter 13

"Does it have a name?" Morwinyon asked, hefting the blade. It was heavier than Delu had been, but it fit her hand as perfectly.

Dis snorted. "What has it done to earn a name? It's a sword. I made it for you. Use it if you're going to."

The sword had a graceful curve not as deep as most elvish blades, a crossguard not quite as large as the usual dwarvish run, and all the lethality of both. It was shorter than Delu had been, too, and thicker. Morwinyon made a few humming passes with it, carefully away from Dis and the rest of the Dunedain smiths, getting a feel for it while Dis watched.

It felt made for her because it was, and it not feel hungry as Delu had. Morwinyon used it.

* * *

Now Morwinyon walked uneasily towards Moria's other entrance, itching to draw the sword. It would be impolite to approach with weapons in hand, though.

Moria felt like it did not want her much as Erebor had not wanted her, but she had won over Erebor in the end. Surely Moria was no pickier: Erebor had, after all, been exceptionally picky for a mountain from what Morwinyon had been able to tell over the years. Even the downs and their surrounding peaks had liked her better than Erebor at first, and the Blue Mountains had never made her feel unwelcome.

The orc tracks nearby might have something to do with Moria's hostility. They were fresher than the others she and Kili had run across, and more numerous.

"A recent attack?" she asked, but she doubted it.

"I don't like it," Kili said. "The gates are in disrepair, which we know Balin would never allow. And there aren't any signs of fighting at all."

"But we know that Balin reclaimed Moria," Morwinyon pointed out. "Gloin _and_ Elrond said so. One wrong or exagerating I could believe, but both?"

Kili switched to Khuzdul. "Could the enemy have followed?"

"We are back to spies," Morwinyon replied in the same language. "I do not like it."

"No one would," Kili said. "Things happen all the time that we don't like."

Morwinyon blew out a breath and adjusted her widow's braid so it lay clearly visible over her cloak and armor, Fili's clasp prominently and properly displayed. Dis had given her a few more of Fili's things over the years, including more hair ornaments - she even wore some of them now, braided into the rest of her hair - but the first clasp she wore always.

Kili looked away, up at the stars that were not yet visible, and Morwinyon wished she had not left her knife with Tauriel. Tauriel had deserved a weapon in hand, but Kili should have had something of her to keep too. Morwinyon had over a century of memories of Tauriel, after all. Kili could have at least had a knife.

They continued their cautious approach and remained unchallenged by dwarves or anyone else.

"And yet I still feel watched," Morwinyon murmured in Khuzdul.

Kili grimaced and drew his sword, polite or no, and Morwinyon followed suit. They were almost to the gates, which lay open and, as Kili had said, in disrepair. The wind changed, and Morwinyon felt the now-familiar shadow at the corners of her mind. She stopped, holding up a hand.

See something? Kili signed.

Morwinyon pressed two fingers to her temple absently, and Kili swapped his sword for his bow while she tried to decide why Moria felt more like the barrow downs than Mirkwood or Erebor.

The obvious answer was that a lot of people had died here, but people uncounted had died in Erebor, and Mirkwood regularly lost scouts and guards to spiders or other dangers even when orcs were not trying to creep in. Could it be that the dwarves buried their dead in Moria? But when she had assisted in Erebor they had burned them.

"There is evil here," she said finally in Khuzdul.

Kili swore.

"If my brother is there, we have to go in," she said.

"No," Kili said, and she spun to stare at him.

His jaw was set stubbornly when he continued, "We don't know for sure they went through Moria. We don't know what's there. If Balin and his folk remain, then they are safe enough for now: if they don't, then they are likely already dead. The two of us couldn't help."

"That's why we're here," Morwinyon retorted. "To help."

"We were charged to protect Aragorn," Kili said.

Morwinyon gestured to Moria.

"You said your cousin would know where they are."

"I said she _might,"_ Morwinyon snapped.

"What harm to ask? If they are dead they're already dead, and if they aren't then presumably they are clever enough to live another few days while we return with reinforcements."

Just because he made sense was no reason for Morwinyon to like it.

"Your brother would hate it if you charged in like an idiot and got yourself killed," Kili added softly. "Arwen wouldn't like it either, and Dis and the twins-"

"Low blow," Morwinyon told him, but she was already turning away.

"You never fight fair," Kili said, following. "Why should I?"

* * *

"You do know your cousin, right?" Kili asked in Khuzdul two days later as they entered the fringes of Lothlorien. They had fallen into the language out of paranoia, probably, but it also felt good to speak it.

"I have met her," Morwinyon said. "At least, I believe I have. I would have been very young, but I am sure she visited at some point."

"Would this be before or after you remember meeting Elrond?"

"It may have been my first birthday," Morwinyon admitted. "She is my mother's cousin, remember? She did not visit after Laeriel went missing, and I never went anywhere but Mirkwood, so-"

She stopped talking when two arrows hit the ground, each bare inches from Mowrinyon and Kili.

"Halt," someone said unnecessarily as several elves dropped to the ground around them. He spoke Sindarin with a shadow of her mother's accent.

"We mean no harm," Morwinyon began in Sindarin, letting her mother's accent take hold with more than a shadow. "We come seeking-"

"I know who you seek," the elf said. "All who come here seek her. I ask why you come seeking with a dwarf, for we never had one before and now we have two in a year."

"I come seeking with my brother," Morwinyon said, keeping her hands clearly visible. All of the elves but the one speaking had arrows trained on her and Kili, and the speaker had knives close to hand. "We come seeking for Legolas Thranduilion and Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the latter on behalf of the Lady Arwen-"

"With a dwarf."

Morwinyon drew herself up to her full height - taller than this elf - and said coldly, "I am Mirwen Thranduilien, daughter of Laeriel Glingaerien, who was daughter of-"

"I know who birthed the Lady Laeriel-"

"And I tell you I come here with my brother, and this is my welcome?"

"Welcoming people, elves," Kili said in Khuzdul, smirking at her.

She could hear the elves shifting at the language they could not understand, but the elf in front of her said, "You cannot be her daughter. Morwinyon of the Greenwood died decades ago, when she went to fight a dragon."

"I did _not_ die," she snapped at him in Quenya, the only way she could think to prove the point. She knew her pronunciation was archaic (" _Correct,"_ Laeriel would have said instead, "Your pronunciation is _correct."_ ), not to mention that she was fluent in it at all. She subsided back into Sindarin when she finished, "I admit I fared worse than I might have, and I admit I never saw anyone after, but neither did I die on the mountain. I would like your name, sir, since you have mine."

"The children of Thranduil travel far then, and in unusual company," he said instead of answering. "I wonder that he allows it."

"My father cannot allow me anything," Morwinyon replied, tamping down the reflexive but weak surge of old anger. "And he never refused my brother anything he truly wanted. You have seen Legolas recently?"

The marchwarden studied her. Finally he said, "You are certainly Noldor, and I have heard that the daughter of Laeriel resembled her greatly. Perhaps you speak the truth."

He stepped forward and gestured towards her face. Something about it reminded her of Thranduil, though she did not know why. She carefully lifted off her eyepatch and let the elf look his fill at her missing eye and scar-covered right side, letting him turn her head left and right at his pleasure. He did it gently, thumb running along the line of her jaw and brushing her ear. She did not flinch.

"And you have certainly faced a dragon," he said. "Did no one warn you about the blood?"

"No," she said. "I was warned about all the wrong things, I think."

He released her chin and stepped back. "I am Haldir," he said. "We will take you to the Lady, but the dwarf will be blindfolded."

He continued when she opened her mouth, "No negotiating. I will blindfold you as well if you wish it, for honor's sake."

"Something tells me it's not the first time he said that," Kili said in Sindarin. One of the elves jumped. Haldir cocked his head.

"You enjoy that too much," Morwinyon told Kili, and let herself be blindfolded.


	14. Chapter 14

Their blindfolds were removed some time later, and Morwinyon squinted against the sudden light. Lothlorien was not soft around the edges as Imladris had been. The light was hard-edged and silvery, and the trees had not been shaped into dwellings. Dwellings had been built into and around them when they were not built of white gleaming stone - or maybe it was white wood polished to a sheen. Morwinyon reached out to run a finger along a wall as they climbed the stairwell around a trunk and still could not be sure. She felt watched, but not with ill-will. The presence felt disconcertingly neutral.

Haldir beckoned them onward and they followed, still surrounded front and back by elves. Kili took it all in with awe, at one point walking backwards up the steps so he could look up into the trees.

One of the elves snickered. Morwinyon glared.

"Do they nail the boards to trees?" he asked, still walking backwards. "I can't see anything of the sort, but it that doesn't mean they couldn't be hidden."

"I do not know," Morwinyon replied. "We do not live in trees in the Greenwood, if you recall."

Another elf muttered something about how that might be the problem.

"Courtesy would not go amiss," Haldir called without looking back.

"Courtesy for _elves,"_ Kili muttered in Khuzdul.

"They are ignorant and poorly-travelled," Morwinyon said at her usual volume in Sindarin. "I am sure that were they to step outside their own land even once they would learn better."

Haldir shot her a look over his shoulder. Morwinyon tilted her chin up and looked past him as they stepped onto a landing.

"Morwinyon Thranduilien," a woman's voice said, deep and sure. Morwinyon felt a tug inside of her somewhere near her heart: she wanted to listen to it.

Morwinyon told herself sternly that she had felt a similar fascination before when she went to fight a dragon. Smaug had not ensnared her - not for long - and her cousin would not at all.

A light laugh sounded in her mind, and Morwinyon frowned at the woman standing before her.

"I am not sure of the ethics involved with entering someone's mind, but I am sure that I do not like you in mine," Morwinyon told Galadriel.

"You have my apologies," Galadriel said, inclining her head so more lances of silvery light reflected from her silver and gold tresses and gesturing widely with her free hand. Her other, Morwinyon saw, rested on the arm of an elf Morwinyon had not noticed. Everything in the wood focused on Galadriel to the point her husband seemed at first invisible. Galadriel continued, "It is, as with many things, habit. I will do better."

Haldir glared at Morwinyon, and Kili glared at him, and Morwinyon, to forestall any further unpleasantness, said, "We come on behalf of your granddaughter, who asked us to ensure the safety of Aragorn, son of Arathorn. We thought to catch up with his party, but we could not find their path, and my brother is with them. I thought of you and your knowing, and how you might know…"

Morwinyon trailed off, making a face. She thought herself eloquent, usually.

Galadriel laughed again, aloud this time, but not cruelly. "You ask that I look into their minds, when you do not care for me to look into yours?"

"I am not a _hypocrite,"_ Morwinyon snapped, drawing herself up. Haldir took two steps forward, conveniently stopping between Morwinyon and Galadriel.

"Do not tease her, Altariel," Celeborn murmured to his wife. "Laeriel never took it well either."

Galadriel laughed once more. "Laeriel _was_ a bit of a hypocrite, husband, and she knew it. Her daughter is not Laeriel, though, and I think she is tired of the comparison."

"Unto death," Morwinyon said, not entirely truthfully. "I thought you might have heard news, or seen something."

"I have seen many things," Galadriel replied. "Not all of them will come to pass."

"That's spectacularly unhelpful," Kili said. Morwinyon could not disagree.

Galadriel smiled and said, "You may look, if you choose."

"Not me, thanks," Kili said, though Galadriel had not really been talking to him. "I make my own future."

"Knowing what may come to pass does not mean you do not make your own future," Galadriel pointed out, eyes still on Morwinyon. "It means only that you have more information than before."

"You want me to look," Morwinyon said. "Why?"

"Different people see different things," Galadriel said. "I confess to curiosity. It is my besetting sin."

Celeborn snorted.

"The witch rumors sound truer and truer," Kili said in Khuzdul.

Galadriel smiled at him, and he blushed.

"Witchcraft indeed," Morwinyon said dryly in Khuzdul, nudging him, and in Sindarin said, "Show me what you wish me to see, if you believe it will help us."

Galadriel shrugged. "I did not say it would."

"You are the least helpful," Morwinyon told her, and Haldir glared as Celeborn turned amused eyes to his wife. Galadriel only smiled again, and motioned for her to follow.

* * *

"I only look into it?" Morwinyon asked.

"As I have said."

Morwinyon looked.

* * *

Tauriel glanced over her shoulder, knocking arrow to bow, and frowned. Fili, older than she remembered him looking, stood in the throne room of Erebor, shoulders back and chin raised. She could not see who sat in the throne - Thorin, she supposed.

Legolas frowned too, elsewhere ona river, looking up as if directly at her, and near him were two men - which was Aragorn she did not know. The dwarf with him was obviously Gimli, and there was something about Bilbo in one of the four hobbits' faces.

Dis stood looking over a mountain valley, Thranduil looked up from a desk of papers, someone Morwinyon could not see breathed shallowly in the dark, and Elrond smiled directly at her.

The mirror changed, and Morwinyon fell into it.

* * *

Morwinyon/Laeriel braced both feet against the dragon's hide and pulled. Delu came free slowly, reluctant like it wanted to stay in Dagnir's throat. "None of that," she said through gritted teeth. "I have use for you yet."

It popped free finally, and she barely caught herself before taking a nasty tumble. She cast around for something to clean the blade of dragon blood, which would erode steel and burn her skin almost as badly as dragon fire. The damage to her hands could be healed, given a skilled enough medic, but her sword would not recover.

"Dragons," she muttered in disgust as she settled for wiping Delu on a leathery wing as best she could and sheathing it. "Always mucking everything up."

Then she heard a gurgling sort of cough, and thought suddenly of how she had not heard a sound from Thranduil since… she could not think of when. She started towards the noise, trying to convince herself that she did not feel any sort of doom descending.

She ignored the thought that she had heard the sound centuries before, on a mountainside as barren as this valley.

"Thranduil!" she called. He was not where she had seen him last – of course, there had been a large dragon stomping around. Obviously he would have moved, but she would have thought it equally obvious that he would then look for her. Maybe he was, and they had missed each other through some trick of the smoke or shadow of the dragon's corpse, upon which she wished a healthy dose of rot and maggots.

Her first reaction, when she found him, was stark denial. Denial of memory, of Gil-Galad lying burned and broken, denial of that body being Thranduil's, perhaps even denial of the event itself. There was no body: it was some strangely shaped rock.

It was not a strangely shaped rock. She stood over the corpse, whose skin had run and stretched like wax. The effect was, oddly, confined mostly to the left side: the right, were she to turn her head just so, looked only as if he was surprised. She wondered what she was supposed to do now – Gil-Galad had been alive, still, when she made her way to him, had been able to tell her everything would be all right.

Removing the armor was pointless, if he was dead. Removing him was pointless too. Had that been his dying breath she heard, when she was busy fussing with Delu?

She went to sit beside him, and Delu got in her way as a sword on her belt never had before. Even when she was young, blades had always hung easily from her belt, and she had never had difficulty adjusting them to whatever position she chose. She stood again, fingers clumsy on the belt buckle as she tried to undo it. Finally she managed, letting Delu hit the ground with a too-heavy thump, and she knelt back down.

"You could not dodge?" she asked finally, voice too loud and echoing. "All of this time, and you could not dodge?"

He did not answer, obviously. She kept talking.

"What am I supposed to do now? Go home? Tell everyone that you died because you could not dodge one measly blast of dragon fire? Tell them you died because I took my eyes off of you for a moment? It should have been you killing the dragon, not I! What am I supposed to tell our son, who made me promise I would always bring you home?"

She sat for far too long. Ríndir and a small contingent of scouts came looking for them.

"Go away," she said tiredly when he approached cautiously. "You were right, we should have brought more people, but will you go away?"

"Lady," he said quietly. "It has been a full day since Dagnir fell."

"Since I killed him," she corrected.

"Yes," he said slowly, as if he was not certain who she meant. Laeriel was not entirely certain herself.

"Go away," she said again.

He hesitated, but in the end he, and the others who had followed him, did.

She had been half afraid they would send Legolas next, at which point she would have to leave off sitting beside Thranduil, but they did not. If they had sent Legolas, she would have to admit to breaking her promise.

"I told him I would say no to Mandos himself," she said. "The problem with making promises you do not know how to keep is that eventually it comes time to keep them."

She reached blindly for Thranduil's hand – the right one, the one that did not have bone showing – and tried to will health into him, as she had seen Elrond do. Of course, Elrond was the best healer of the age, and also his patients were alive. Nothing happened.

"I do not know how to do this," she snarled, but she did not let go even when starlight filtered down through the slowly dissipating smoke.

Was his hand warmer? She blinked, and could have sworn his eyelid twitched. "Thranduil?" Nothing.

"I am going to take that as a sign," she said. "Do I pray? Do I-" the smoke cleared further. More starlight filtered through.

Morwinyon-as-Laeriel knew she had never prayed before, not really. Her upbringing had not lent itself to it, not with a Feanori ancestor in a Sindarin city, but she knew the Valar: she knew who starlight belonged to, and she knew who might take pity, and she knew too who death belonged to.

"Varda, Elbereth, whichever you prefer, I ask you as best beloved and mother of all – after a fashion – do not let him leave. Nienna, I have had so much of sorrow and borne it well. After a fashion. I do not ask for myself – no, that is a lie. I ask _not only_ for myself – do not let him leave. Mandos, who has so many of my loved ones, I ask that you leave this one. Please?"

Starlight became solid, like glowing pillars, and a voice brushed across her mind.

 _But Quellë,_ death whispered - of course death knew her mother-name. _What will you give us_?

Morwinyon/Laeriel came back to herself with a jolt, and for a heartbreaking moment thought she had been hallucinating. Then Thranduil jerked, gasping and choking, something bubbling in his lungs as he tried to scream in pain, and she went to work prying off the armor.

She could _feel_ the energy humming through her hands and into him, could nearly feel his hurts. She concentrated on his lungs: breathing seemed as though it would be the most pressing issue. When she sat back, exhausted, Thranduil looked up at her. His left eye was white and staring: she had not erased the rest of the damage entirely, or even healed it all.

He was breathing though, and as she watched his left hand reached up to hover at her collar, almost touching but not quite. She grabbed it and held it to her cheek, reaching out to touch his face with her other hand, running careful fingers over his brows, his cheekbones, his lips.

"Laeriel," he croaked. It was half a question.

"Yes," she said.

"It was dark," he said, voice small and hoarse. "It was dark, and you were not there."

"But I am here now," she said, hand falling to fist in the tattered remains of his shirt. "I am here now, my heart, I am here."

He nodded, right hand coming up to cover the hand she clutched at his shirt with. "Do not leave again?"

"No," she said.

When they staggered into the camp Ríndir and the scouts had set up just outside the mouth of the valley – more accurately, when Morwinyon/Laeriel staggered into camp with an unconscious Thranduil in her arms – there was dead silence.

"I will need a stretcher," Morwinyon/Laeriel told Bruinith, Ríndir's second. "I do not think it would be good for him if I were to carry him all the way to the Halls."

Bruinith shot Ríndir a worried look, but he nodded sharply. Morwinyon/Laeriel wondered when, exactly, her people had stopped obeying her orders the moment she gave them.

"I will need a messenger sent to Lord Elrond as well," she said. "With all haste, if you please. Tell him I would like to see him with the same."

"Yes, Lady. But, perhaps you would like to…" Ríndir trailed off.

Morwinyon/Laeriel looked at him.

"Perhaps you would like to put him down?" he said cautiously. "It cannot be comfortable, carrying him."

"He asked me not to leave him," she said, shifting for a better grip.

"You need not," he said, coming towards her slowly. "But here, let me help you lay him out-"

He reached for Thranduil's arm and, swearing long, loud, and creatively, leapt backwards when the elvenking curled back into Morwinyon/Laeriel.

Morwinyon/Laeriel raised her eyebrows.

"He _lives_ ," Ríndir exclaimed. "But Lady, I saw him dead at your feet, I saw him _melted-_ "

"Yes, well," Laeriel said, as Morwinyon felt herself fading away. "I did not care for that state of affairs."

* * *

Morwinyon fell farther or perhaps up, she could not tell, gasping as if she was truly underwater. She jerked finally to a halt over Mirkwood. There was a long thin path of ash though no fires burned: she looked for the cause, floating gently down until she landed. Her feet left no imprints.

Orcs swarmed through the trees to either side, shrieking and laughing, breaking limbs and leaving gouges in tree trunks with teeth and nails, but they held no torches and seemed to avoid the burned area. The edges were too neat, Morwinyon noticed. There was no charring of other tree trunks, just the wild tearing destruction of a people who had been so long denied anything beautiful that they had to destroy what beauty they found.

Morwinyon had not until this moment realized that she considered Mirkwood beautiful.

She looked up the path towards her father's halls and saw a lone figure walking, arms stretched out and behind them as if relishing the forest. Where her fingers trailed decay followed, spreading from her hands until the branches turned skeletal and the leaves crackled brown and finally the tree entire crumbled into dust, raining down like dirty grey snow. Ahead of the figure were so many different rustlings that they came together in a roar - the creatures of the forest fled before the figure, even the spiders, shrieking and hissing.

A long curtain of pin-straight hair fell past the figure's hips, darker than the gleaming black metal of the crown set into their head. It rose in jagged points, and the base was hidden so well in their hair that Morwinyon could not see it. They were tall and wore armor to match the crown, but only one hand was gauntleted. The rest of their arms were bare and pale, as if sunlight had not touched them in a century or more. Something about her was familiar.

Morwinyon blinked, and the scene wavered: she saw the doors of Thranduil's halls flung open, and orcs pouring in. She was closer to the figure now - close enough to tell in the way of elves that the figure was a woman.

Nurchon charged out, cutting down orcs and launching himself at the enemy's captain, who deflected his blade with a twist of her one armored hand and reached out to touch him between the eyes with her flesh and blood hand. Her mother's lieutenant fell, horror twisting his face far more than the black bubbling veins the orc's leader left him with. She stepped over his body.

Morwinyon was in the kitchens, in her vantage point in the little twist of root that no one else had ever found. Cevendis the baker did not cower when orcs invaded her kitchen - she was a silvan elf, and silvan elves did not cower for anyone. She and her fellows used their territory to their advantage: an orc was shoved into the blazing hearth, and kitchen knives were wielded with frantic enthusiasm. Every silvan in the kitchen clawed at faces and bit and snarled to the very end, when Morwinyon tried to look away and could not.

She saw Bruineth fall and Tundir, who fired arrows grimly into the mass of orcs until he ran out, and Súliel tried to drag him back and failed and fought until she was the last elf before the throne room door and then she fell too. Morwinyon tried to look away again and found herself on the other side of the throne room doors, watching them bend under the weight of the orcs outside.

"-as many as you can," her father said behind her, and she turned. Thranduil stood with Delu in hand, visibly shaking even if his glamor held.

"I am not sure we can make a difference," Inwiel said, her face taught and pale. Her daughters stood with her, armed and armored, and Rindir stood with what Morwinyon realized were the last of the scouts. All told there were perhaps fifty elves in the room. None of them, she realized, were Noldor.

"Even one fewer will help Elrond and Galadriel," Thranduil said.

"What captain is it?" Inwiel's eldest, Elien, asked. "They do not chant a name."

"Why _here?"_ Peliwen added. She was less composed than her sister, but then Elien had joined the scouts and Peliwen was a clerk.

"Does it matter?" Thranduil asked. No one answered.

Thranduil stepped falteringly to the front and stood, Delu raised, and waited,

"Do not let them take you," Morwinyon heard Inwiel murmur to her girls just as the doors crumbled like the trees.

Morwinyon noticed the hand first - it was not a gauntlet as she had first thought. It was a skeleton hand, every fingerbone worked through with wires and joined by tiny wheels so it flexed almost as a real hand might. The bone pieces were yellowed with age, the end fingerbones cracked around shards of metal that had been driven into the tips in a mockery of fingernails. The whole thing was secured to her arm with metal - it looked as if someone had poured it over her wrist and let it drip down to her elbow.

Morwinyon noticed the crown second, for the spikes were not secured to a base but set into the woman's skull. Those in her forehead showed raw and weeping wounds around them.

As the orcs exploded into the room and the enemy captain reached out to hold Thranduil's throat in her metal-and-bone hand, the other plucking Delu from him as easily as breathing. Morwinyon was not entirely sure the woman's hand had actually touched Delu before it leapt from Thranduil's. The woman lifted him from the floor, his face went slack, glamor abruptly gone, and Morwinyon finally understood why she looked familiar: the face she saw was her own.

"I am returned, Thranduil," she said. "Are you not pleased to see me?"

She squeezed, and Morwinyon looked up and away, back to Lothlorien and her cousin's too-sympathetic eyes.


	15. Chapter 15

"And so?" Galadriel asked.

Morwinyon did not answer at first. She had too much to consider, not least that she had been in her mother's thoughts and then seen herself bring about the destruction of the Greenwood.

I had two eyes, she thought suddenly, staring past Galadriel. She was still not used to thinking of herself with only one, she supposed, however used to compensating for it she had become. She reached for her right hand with her left, feeling that it was there, and asked, "Does it always show the truth?"

"Is, was, and may be," Galadriel said. "Only one is mutable."

"But it is based in, what, probability?"

Galadriel shrugged. "Perhaps it is based on the hearts of those who look. Perhaps they are warnings, if the watcher takes a certain path."

Morwinyon, frowning, said, "What does it mean, if I saw something that cannot be?"

"I would say that it could be, given certain circumstances. What did you see?"

"My mother," Morwinton said, and it was as if speaking the words made everything clearer: Morwinyon had lost an eye, not a hand, and if Laeriel had been long in the clutches of the Enemy. Anyone might be turned after a hundred years or more. She thought of someone breathing in the dark who she could not see.

Galadriel looked suddenly sad, and tipped her head back to stare into the high, straight branches above. Morwinyon did not: the light had not become easier on her eyes.

"I have lost many loved ones," Galadriel told her, voice even sadder, and Morwinyon wondered if Galadriel gazed upwards not to look for something herself but to keep Morwinyon from seeing her face. "Even I did not expect to lose Laeriel."

Struck by a thought, Morwinyon demanded, "Did you see her here? In your mirror? Is that why-"

Galadriel shook her head. Morwinyon subsided.

"When I looked I saw nothing," her cousin said. "When I listened - nothing. A shining silver surface, as if it were a mirror in truth."

Galadriel smiled suddenly, a little ruefully, and continued, "But it was always thus. Laeriel was always difficult, and to me her mind was never open."

Morwinyon did not blame Laeriel. She looked back at the mirror.

"You may look again if you wish," Galadriel said. "Sometimes others see more than once."

"Can I choose what to see?" Morwinyon asked, thinking of Tari and Nion, and how Gloin meant to speak to them.

"You cannot," Galadriel admitted. "Only I have managed that."

Morwinyon looked again at the mirror.

"So you see," Galadriel said. "No straight answers, and no certainty. Your future remains yours and what you make of it, and you may tell Kili so."

That was not right, or not entirely right. She had been selfish and irresponsible, she had told Elrond and his children, and it was true.

What kind of princess seeks not to let her kin know her? Elrohir had asked.

The kind that is me, she would have said, but she could not be that kind of princess anymore. Alia wanted her to judge Aragorn, but how could she judge a man who chose another people without hypocrisy? How could she look at her children on a throne that would be their responsibility and say, no, sorry, I cannot help you?

Her future had never been entirely her own: she had responsibilities as a princess, as a mother, and as a sister even if she no longer had them as a wife. Someday one would have to come first, but today duty to all three boiled down to one firm thought.

Mirkwood must be warned.

* * *

Kili agreed with the principle of her argument. He only did not understand why she felt she must do the warning.

"They are my people," she finally said. "I have ignored them long enough."

She would not be budged, and Kili knew it: he must have been arguing for the sake of it, because he sighed and said, "Will I be put in the same cell this time?"

"No one will put you in a cell," Morwinyon said hotly, and realized that she might not have a way to ensure that. Kili knew it too.

"Am I supposed to leave you here then?" she asked. She and Kili had been in each other's pockets for sixty years now. There might have been a week they were not in each other's company, but she could not think of one.

"And go alone to Mirkwood?" he demanded.

"There is no winning here," Morwinyon complained, and went to see Galadriel in her study.

* * *

"Of course you would not go alone," her cousin said, drawing herself up to her full height. It was impressive: Morwinyon knew few people taller than she, but Galadriel definitely was.

"Kili will not be comfortable here or in Mirkwood," Morwinyon told her. "Is there a solution to that then too, o wisest of my kin?"

Celeborn, sitting at the desk, snorted. Galadriel shot him a look. Her husband ignored her and continued writing.

"To be sure," Galadriel said after a moment, turning a gaze of renewed equanimity to Morwinyon. "I have seen a party of dwarves journeying near, but a day or two out."

"I thought your mirror could not tell you what would happen," Morwinyon said suspiciously.

"I saw them leave and I know where from," Galadriel retorted. "Barring catastrophe, they will be there."

"Are they Longbeards?" Morwinyon asked. "Not Broadbeams or-"

Morwinyon had not thought Galadriel could grow taller. She was wrong.

Galadriel stared down her nose at her young cousin and said with great dignity, "Acquit me of stupidity, Morwinyon. My brother was Finrod Felagund, and often did I dwell in his halls. I have been longer acquainted with dwarves than even you. I will arrange your escort tomorrow, and one for Kili."

There was nothing to say to that. Morwinyon dropped a quick bow and left.

* * *

"I won't be comfortable with dwarves either," Kili pointed out. "There's going to be questions."

"There are going to be questions wherever we go," she said. "Do not tell me you do not miss your own folk. I will not believe you."

He fixed her with a look. "Don't pretend you don't. That doesn't mean it isn't complicated."

He had a point, but Morwinyon refused to admit it. She was already rethinking the whole thing: maybe she could bring Kili to Mirkwood with her. Maybe he would not be as miserable as she thought. Maybe she would not have to face her mistakes or misjudgments or discomforts alone, as she had not had to for sixty years.

Grow up, Morwinyon, she told herself. You have been telling everyone you are an adult for near a hundred years, and hated it when they did not listen. Adults face their problems and do what is right, and it would not be right to have Kili come for your comfort when it would not be comfortable for him.

She continued to remind herself of that in the morning, when she and Kili went to meet Galadriel again.

"And who would you send with the princess of Mirkwood?" Morwinyon heard Haldir demand before she had quite come into view. She stopped. Behind her Kili stopped too. "Our borders are ill-defended enough, if what you say is true of the enemy."

"If?" Galadriel asked. She sounded too amused to be offended, but Haldir backtracked.

"When the enemy comes even ten marchwardens could make a difference."

"I thought our people were skilled, Haldir."

"Skill does not always matter when armies clash, Lady, and you know it."

"Just so," Galadriel agreed. "Do you suggest we leave the Greenwood unwarned of the threat we have seen?"

"A royal we is unbecoming of you, Lady," Haldir said reproachfully. "I am doing my duty."

"You always do," she said. "Would you say skill was important in clashes other than armies'?"

"Of course," Haldir replied. He sounded wary. Morwinyon did not blame him: Galadriel sounded as if she was up to something.

"Who would you say was the most skilled of us, then, Haldir?"

"You."

There was a brief moment of silence. Morwinyon thought Galadriel might be giving Haldir a disappointed look. Finally she said, "Of the marchwardens, Haldir. Obviously."

"Me," he said, without any arrogance.

"Just so," Galadriel said again. "You will accompany our eavesdropping princess."

Morwinyon shrugged at Kili as she turned the corner. "It is an old habit of mine. If Haldir does not wish to come, I can go on my own."

Haldir and Kili snorted at the same time.

* * *

Kili did not give his real name to the dwarves that Morwinyon could tell, but they accepted him with only a modicum of discussion.

Haldir, who watched with her from the trees, said, "He is not very trusting."

"Says the person who blindfolds people regularly," Morwinyon retorted, standing as the dwarves passed out of sight. It was a relief to be gone from Lothlorien. She could see without squinting again, and no one watched her - at least not so obviously that she could feel it.

Later that night she almost talked about Tauriel, but a glance at Haldir reminded her that there was no one here to tell things they already knew, or to reassure them of Tauriel's love. She missed Kili almost more than she missed her children, which might not say good things about her: Kili she had been with almost constantly, no matter where she went. Tari and Nion she was used to being separated from.

Two elves travelling alone left hardly any traces and made hardly any impression. They did not stop long enough to make campfires, since they needed hardly any sleep. They walked long into the night and began early in the morning. Morwinyon felt almost as if she was stretching muscles long left to languish and tried not to feel as if she was being disloyal: it was the fault of no one that humans and dwarves needed more sleep or more food than elves did. Lembas might have been boring, but it was perfectly sustaining.

They pushed even harder the last two days, forgoing sleep entirely. Morwinyon was even tired when they reached the borders of Mirkwood and saw the weather-worn statue of her grandmother - she had forgotten what being tired was like.

"You have no border guards?" Haldir asked, which made Morwinyon realize that they had hardly spoken the entire time.

Morwinyon shrugged. "Often the spiders take care of unwanted visitors."

"Of course," Haldir said. "The spiders."

Morwinyon stepped into the embrace of the forest, taking the first breath of its air in decades, and felt the warm humidity of the place wrap around her like a blanket. She remembered thinking at the mountain that Mirkwood had no favorites.

Mine, she felt something say in the back of her mind, dark and comforting like a balmy night. Mine mine mine.

She had been wrong.


	16. Chapter 16

"I refuse to believe that they survived this long to die in a tunnel collapse," Tauriel said, fists clenched at her sides as she stared at the jumbled pile of rock and masonry that spilled into the water.

A single pebble tumbled down the slope and hit the water. There was no splash. There were no ripples. The Mirrormere's silvery flat surface remained both silvery and flat. The sound seemed more muffled than it should have been, even.

 _I'm not going to look,_ Fili thought, and directed his attention to Moria's collapsed entrance and Tauriel's canvassing of it. He should help, but that would mean moving closer. He wasn't sure if it was his fear of the lake or fear of finding something else that kept him from it, but both had twined together. It wasn't fair, that Kili and Morwinyon had survived the mountain and who knew what else, and now he had to worry about them dying here.

When had life been fair, though?

" _Nothing,"_ Tauriel said in disgust. She dropped to sit, jaw set. More pebbles fell. More nothing happened when they hit the water.

Not that Fili was looking.

"There is too much rock and too little - why do you stare?"

"I'm not," said Fili.

Tauriel frowned at him and stood, leaning over to peer into the water.

"Do you see anything?" he asked.

"No," she said slowly, drawing out the word. "I do not even see myself. It could be some trick of angle or light-"

"Maybe," Fili said too quickly.

Tauriel shot him a look but began to climb back down. Fili turned away, back towards the pass.

"Wait," Tauriel said.

Fili closed his eyes.

"What is it I should see?"

"It isn't _should,"_ Fili protested, and sighed. "Durin saw a crown of stars. Seven of them."

"I see no crown."

"Good."

"I see a star," she said. "Just the one. Fili, _look."_

He turned to follow her pointing finger and saw only a shining, mirrored surface.

"Fili," she said when he didn't come closer.

 _It's only water,_ he reminded himself, forcing his feet to move. _What can water do? Whatever you see, Tauriel won't make you tell her, and even if she did - well, what will she do, make you be king again? And who would rule after you, if your children have been raised as Dunedain anyway, and who would rule beside you if Kili and Morwinyon are dead again, and -_

It wasn't fair, he thought again, but even if it wasn't, he would be king again if it meant Morwinyon and Kili still lived.

He stepped to the edge, the toes of his boots barely touching the water. A reflection grew from there, still and perfect. He looked older, he realized. When was the last time he had looked in a mirror? Years, probably. He looked like Thorin, he realized, if he ignored the hair.

His necklace had worked its way free of the neck of his shirt to lay gleaming on his chest, a string of gems upon a silver thread, and as if to match seven stars shone on his brow.

Had Thorin seen them? he wondered. Had Thorin looked?

"Fili," Tauriel snapped, grabbing his chin and directing his stare elsewhere.

At the end of Durin's Crown, as if the constellation pointed to it, an eighth star glinted orange and bright.

" _Morwinyon,"_ Tauriel said gleefully, signing the star's name in front of his face as if unsure he would understand.

Fili sat by the Mirrormere and laughed until tears ran down his face.

* * *

The laughter did not last long into the trek through the Redhorn pass, especially not when confronted with a hard-packed snowdrift as tall as he was. Fili glared at the drift and then up at Tauriel, who crouched atop it.

"Someone has come through recently," she said. "There are some places where a fresh snowfall has covered frozen-over tracks. They were made by someone warm."

"No one could be warm in this," Fili grumbled as he took the hand Tauriel held down to him and let her haul him up and over.

"Someone warmer than me," Tauriel amended. "And there is a hollow a little farther on that could have been a shelter. I thought dwarves were used to mountains."

"We are used to friendly mountains," Fili retorted. He was already sinking into the snow. Tauriel's lips compressed - she was trying to hide a smile, he _knew_ she was trying to hide a smile - and slipped past him and ahead again.

"We can stay there tonight," she called back. Fili waded after her.

* * *

Even Tauriel was disheveled by the time they reached the end of the snow. Fili probably looked feral, which was a fine state in which to chase down his wife and brother, let alone wrest kingship from his cousin.

How much of a fight would Dain put up? He had a son, Fili knew, and the son was Fili's age. Did the son have heirs? If Dain had had a daughter Fili might have been able to offer leaving her as the preeminent lady of Erebor - Morwinyon would hopefully have understood, she hadn't seemed thrilled by the prospect sixty years ago - but what could he offer a son, even if Dain cooperated? Fili wouldn't promise to let Dain's son rule after him, not when Angion and Tauriel existed, not if one of his children might want to rule. He supposed Tauriel or Angion might take a liking to someone from Dain's family, but that was a small chance.

Was it really? He didn't know his children. Maybe they would like Dain's descendants.

It was a depressing to remember how little he knew about them. He had tried over the journey to picture them, and then _not_ to picture them so he wouldn't have expectations for them to live up to, and then to picture them again: Morwinyon's hair, maybe, and probably taller than he was. Definitely taller than he was. Would either of them have Kili's quick grin, or were they somber from a lifetime in Dis' company, and who knew what the Dunedain had encouraged? Morwinyon wouldn't have let anyone run roughshod over them or what they wanted, he was sure, but Dis had had the raising of them often, from what Elrond had conveyed, and -

Fili realized that he didn't actually know how his mother parented, not firsthand, not really. Thorin had been the one to make most parenting decisions for Fili. Maybe Fili's children would be more like Kili after all.

Tauriel stopped and Fili reached automatically for his sword, but no threat immediately presented itself.

"Problem?" he asked.

Tauriel shook her head and squinted, shading her eyes. Fili didn't bother to look: if Tauriel couldn't see whatever it was clearly, he didn't have a hope. Instead he waited, keeping an eye on their nearer surroundings.

"Dwarves," she said finally. "A group. Do you want to avoid them?"

Yes.

"No," he said. "I might as well start somewhere. I don't suppose you can tell from here which clan they're from."

"I could not tell if I were standing before them," Tauriel said more dryly than he thought necessary. "Could you tell Sindar from Silvan?"

"Oh sure," Fili replied. "It's just a matter of how far down their noses they look at me."

Tauriel snorted, and they set off.

The party of dwarves dipped in and out of sight as Fili and Tauriel made their way down from the rocky foothills - or so Fili assumed. He couldn't see them for some time, but Tauriel kept them on course until first he could make out moving shapes and then until he was reasonably certain they were dwarves, at which point Tauriel gasped, " _Kili?"_

They both broke into a run, shouting, but Tauriel outpaced Fili easily. She stopped and looked back once.

"For _heaven's sake,"_ Fili snapped, so she turned and ran again.

The back of Fili's mind noted distantly that it was easier this way: there was no way to know who Kili would have embraced first, if there was no way Fili could have gotten to him first, and less far to the back of his mind Fili was grateful to know he wouldn't have to know yet if he harbored some part of Thorin's jealousy. That would come later with the mountain, he was sure.

But now there was a dark-haired dwarf looking up and then beginning to run towards Tauriel, and now Kili and Tauriel collided in a laughing, crying pile, and now Fili threw himself in with abandon. Now, he had his brother back.


	17. Chapter 17

A few steps in, Morwinyon realized that Haldir had stopped walking. She looked over her shoulder: he stood barely inside the trees and his face had drained of its normal color, leaving a sickly grey-green in its place.

"Haldir?" she asked.

He swallowed hard, as if against bile, and said, "Do you not feel that?"

"The forest?" she asked. "Of course. It is worse nearer Dol Guldur, they tell me."

Haldir stared at her as a breeze rattled through the trees, swirling leaves around their feet and sending his hair flying back. Hers, securely braided, moved only a little.

"I am used to it," she told him, turning back to the path. "I was born here, you know."

She heard him swallow, but he followed her with halting steps. She had to reevaluate Elrond, if the forest affected Haldir so: Elrond had not, after all, looked as though he would vomit while he had visited.

The forest lingered in her mind, falling over itself like Tari and Nion had when they were small, when she returned from scouting and they wanted to tell her everything that had happened in her absence. She heard no more distinct words, but sometimes she had not with Tari and Nion either, and she had still smiled and asked them to repeat themselves more slowly.

It was worth a try, she supposed.

 _Hello,_ she thought, and stumbled at the avalanche of feeling it shoved at her.

"A moment?" she asked Haldir tightly. She leaned her forehead against a tree without waiting for a response.

 _I do not know what you want from me,_ she tried, and heard an echoed _mine mine mine._

Was this what Thorin had felt in the mountain?

As if it had heard her, the forest drew back enough for her to draw a breath. It felt vaguely insulted.

 _I am sure you are kinder than the mountain,_ she assured it, unsure if it was true, and wondered how much the forest influenced her father and how much her father influenced the forest.

The forest subsided, mollified for the moment.

She looked at Haldir, who still did not look well, and tried to impress upon the forest that Haldir was a friend. _He came to ensure I arrived safely._

The forest went suddenly quiet, and Haldir gasped as if he had been underwater and only now come up for air.

"Better?" Morwinyon asked.

"I understand why you have no need for border guards," Haldir managed. "You could have warned me."

Morwinyon shrugged instead of telling him that she had no idea if Mirkwood was always like that, or even if it listened to others aside from her.

The path was not even beneath her feet, but it was clear and sure. There should have been scouts farther in, and guards closer to the halls themselves, but they saw no one and nothing - not even the leaves of the trees rustled. Aside from that one early gust, there were no breezes to ruffle the leaves.

Haldir walked closer and closer to her, nearly stepping on her heels by the time they reached the entry bridge.

Here there were guards, but they said nothing until she and Haldir had crossed halfway, when finally another gust of wind blew through.

One elf gave a short, bitten-off exclamation, raising his bow: the other steadied her spear. Morwinyon halted, Haldir behind her.

"Who is it who thinks to visit the halls of Thranduil thus?" the spear-wielder called.

"How else would we visit?" Morwinyon asked. "I did not wish to swim."

" _Lady Mirwen?"_ the elf with the bow demanded, and Morwinyon realized he was Tundir.

Still? Really? Another longer wind blew past her, throwing leaves into Tundir's face. They missed the other elf by inches.

 _Oh, stop it,_ Morwinyon thought at Mirkwood. It subsided with a sulky murmur.

From the way the other elves shot nervous looks at the trees, she was not the only one who heard it this time.

"I still prefer Morwinyon," she said, drawing their attention back to her. "I come to bring warning to my father's halls, and with me comes Haldir of Lothlorien."

She had not asked his lineage, she realized. Someday she would remember to learn everyone's names.

When they said nothing, she added helpfully, "As you can see, I am not dead."

The guard with the spear snorted and promptly clapped a hand to her mouth. Morwinyon looked more closely and recognized Elien. She took it as a good sign that Inwiel's eldest held a spear and not a sword, as she had in Galadriel's mirror.

"React as you will," Morwinyon told her, and ruefully continued, "It is not as if your mother has not earned you the right after all these years."

"My mother mourned you," Elien replied. "We all did. And Tauriel-"

"I do not wish to speak of Tauriel," Morwinyon said.

"Wonders never cease," Tundir muttered.

"Are these questions to confirm my identity, or only to chide me? I have been chided plenty of late, but I will accept more from Inwiel's daughter if she feels it owed."

Haldir, in the corner of her vision, raised an eyebrow, and Tundir looked shamefacedly to the side. She was not sure if he was shamed for the things she thought he should be or just because she did not think he had a right to her time.

Elien said, "I will save my chiding for later, Lady. You will receive that and more when you enter."

Morwinyon winced. "Perhaps my father should be notified ahead of my actual arrival."

"Not your brother?" Tundir asked.

"My brother is not here," Morwinyon replied. "The Lady Galadriel told me so. If you question her, I am afraid Haldir will be upset. May we enter, or would you like further proof that I am me?"

Elien's brow quirked in humor. "Truthfully, that sentence is enough for me. No prettier words, Morwinyon?"

"You never teased like this when I was young," Morwinyon said crossly.

"You are not even three hundred years old," Elien replied. "You are still young."

Morwinyon almost protested: I have fought a dragon, she almost said. I have birthed children and been widowed and fought orcs and goblins aplenty. I killed Azog the Defiler. I am all but lorekeeper for a Dunedain clan, and they respect me enough to heed my thoughts on their ruler. I do not feel young.

But she had not felt young in Mirkwood either, and she had been. She had not even known what it meant that the forest tried to speak to her, and she had not known what it would mean to go and fail to return.

So she shrugged and agreed, "There are many with many more years."

Elien jerked her head at Tundir, and he slipped inside ahead of them while they waited for an escort or relief.

"Your father is not here, you know," Elien said with deliberate casualness.

"What is the point of your lady if she will not give me pertinent information?" Morwinyon demanded of Haldir. Before he could leap to Galadriel's defense, she realized the importance of the remark.

"What do you mean, he is not here? He has not left his halls since-"

"Since you went to fight a dragon," Elien finished. "Well, so it was. He goes out now in the trees, in certain company."

Morwinyon's face must have shown her confusion, or maybe just the sudden stirring of the forest - _will you stop -_ because Elien said, "He is trying _,_ Morwinyon. He has always _tried."_

That he had failed she did not say. Morwinyon was not sure Elien would have agreed that Thranduil had failed.

And she had after all never asked Galadriel. She had not thought to, and perhaps Galadriel had thought she would not care.

I am trying too, she thought but again did not say. Her anger was unfounded in this at least: if Thranduil did not know she lived, he could not have inconvenienced her on purpose.

She did notice that after the first shock neither Elien nor Tundir had asked how she had come to be there so close and so unseen.

"Where did he go?" she asked.

"Scouting," Elien replied. "Or raiding. It is difficult to say these days, when the orcs creep closer from the south and Dol Guldur watches."

"They do not come only from the south," Morwinyon said, remembering Galadriel's mirror and the angle of the sun.

Peliwen skidded through the doors, catching herself on her sister's shoulder. "Morwinyon!"

Behind her were Tundir and Bruineth, the latter of whom essayed a short bow. "Lady."

"Peliwen, Bruineth," Morwinyon returned. "It is good to see you."

"Have you come home?" Peliwen asked, no recriminations to be seen, ink-stained fingers of one hand reaching out.

Morwinyon stared at it, wondering how much of her loneliness had been self-inflicted. She remembered tucking herself into corners and walking deserted halls, and Cevendis leaving out an extra sweet or roll, and here was Peliwen, glad to see her.

Thranduil had kept to his rooms when he did not have official business. Even the parties were staged, careful reminders to everyone that life could and would continue, and he had smiled coldly down on his subjects from the high table. How often had her people assumed she was the same as her father, with only Tauriel brave enough or close enough to ignore it?

Morwinyon took Peliwen's hand and pulled her into a hug. She had not come to Mirkwood for her father, she remembered. She had come for her people, who did not deserve to die because they had given their princess the privacy they thought she wanted.

"I do not come to stay," she admitted when she released Peliwen. "I have-"

She choked. She had almost said she had responsibilities. How callous would it be, to dismiss the ones she had here? How did people balance this sort of thing? If she had been truly a princess of Erebor, her responsibilities would have shifted: she would have been queen one day. A queen's duties superceded a princess'. Where did widowed princess stack up?

 _Mine,_ the forest reminded her.

"It is all very complicated," she said apologetically.

Behind her, Haldir snorted. It sounded very much like the sound Celeborn had made when Morwinyon had questioned Galadriel.

"You will want to clean up," Peliwen said firmly into the silence that resulted there. "And your companion…"

"Haldir of Lothlorien," Morwinyon replied automatically, for the second time.

"May want to rest."

Morwinyon blinked and looked over her shoulder. Haldir looked better than he had when they entered Mirkwood, but he did not look entirely happy either.

"I do not think I have ever seen your hair dishevelled before," she said.

He looked down his nose at her, which was a trick for someone shorter than she was. "How long have you known me, my lady?"

Peliwen grabbed them both by the arms and towed them inside before Morwinyon could respond.

* * *

Tauriel was not in the chamber with the king, for she might have been in his favor but sometimes that meant being assigned places away from possible danger rather than places she could do the most good. She tried not to be bitter.

She also tried not to upbraid the guards outside the door when Legolas came out, leading Morwinyon by the hand. Who thought it was a good idea to let a child walk into a conversation between their king and an emissary of evil?

She glared at the guards.

"Morwinyon," Legolas said, crouched down to meet her eyes, "I must go back inside."

His sister clung stubbornly to his hand. "Then you may take me with you," she said with all the grace of a monarch bestowing great honor. Tauriel tried not to grin.

"No I may _not_ ," Legolas replied vehemently. "You should not have been allowed to enter in the first place."

Tauriel sent a significant look at the guards. She could not see their faces through their helmets, but the one on the left shifted just enough that she rather thought he wanted to shuffle his feet.

"Whyever not?" the princess asked. "Am I not also a member of the royal family and responsible for the realm?"

"Not yet you are not," Legolas sighed. "You are a child still, Morwinyon, and I must return to Father."

She did not let go. Legolas looked around as if for inspiration, and his eyes lit on Tauriel.

Oh no, she thought.

"Tauriel," he said brightly. "I believe you know my sister."

"By reputation only," Tauriel replied. She looked down at the girl as she approached. Morwinyon looked back up at her. She really did look like Laeriel, right down to the shape of her nose.

"Morwinyon, Tauriel," Legolas said. "Tauriel, Morwinyon. Tauriel is my good friend, Morwinyon."

"You have friends?" Morwinyon asked. It might have been funny if the tone had been skeptical, but instead the girl sounded wistful. Her hair was braided back and out of her face, so Tauriel had a good view of the dark eyes that took her in from top to toe.

"I do," Legolas replied gently. "If you ask her nicely, Tauriel might agree to be yours as well."

He looked at Tauriel, and she noticed suddenly that the siblings might not have much resemblance in facial structure but they certainly had the same trick of widening their eyes so that you wanted to give them what they asked for. She sighed, but gave him a short nod.

"Well?" Legolas prompted his sister. She looked at him a moment, obviously unsure, and back at Tauriel.

"Is that all it takes?" Morwinyon asked. "Just asking?"

"It is as good a start as any," Tauriel told her.

"You must also be kind to your friends," Legolas said, because he took his duties very seriously. "And you must always listen."

Morwinyon nodded seriously. "I know _that_. I only did not know how to begin." She smiled hopefully at Tauriel and held out her hand. "Would you be my friend, please, Tauriel?"

Tauriel, obviously, said yes.


End file.
